


Flower

by Thimblerig



Category: The Most Beautiful Man in the World Who Lives in My Building, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempt at Humor, Author's Favorite, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Girl Posse, Pining, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10019168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: “I have depths,” Ana mourned, shaking one wrist where the loose sleeve of her merino sweater had slipped too far down and was getting in the way. The groceries, bereft of support, sagged dangerously. “Unexpected depths, shadowy depths, depths of great dolour. But I do not feel poetic. I feel… I see his face and I get all…” She sighed, pained.





	1. Depths

**Author's Note:**

> The modern AU I never thought I'd write. Inspired by "The Most Beautiful Man In The World, Who Lives In My Building And Only Ever Sees Me When I Look Disgusting" - https://ofgeography.tumblr.com/post/144981655676/the-most-beautiful-man-in-the-world-who-lives-in

“I just saw the Most Beautiful Man in the World,” Ana announced, kicking off her ballet flats as she crossed the threshold. Her bags of groceries teetered precariously in her arms.

“What does he look like?” asked her room-mate as she backed out of the bathroom in clouds of steam, rubbing straggled black locks with a soft blue towel.

“In the morning of the world,” Ana explained dolefully, closing the door with her hip, “when angels sang and the first fresh beam of light stirred the heart of a seed so that where it lay in the rich brown loam a green shoot rose, yea, and blossomed into flowers, that moment _approaches_ the beauty of the Most Beautiful Man in the World.”

“How very poetic,” said Anne, cat-green eyes amused. “Little Miss Business Major.” She twisted her damp hair into an efficient knot and skewered it with one of Ana’s fountain pens.

“I have depths,” Ana mourned, shaking one wrist where the loose sleeve of her merino sweater had slipped too far down and was getting in the way. The groceries, bereft of support, sagged dangerously. “Unexpected depths, shadowy depths, depths of great dolour. But I do not feel poetic. I feel… I see his _face_ and I get all…” She sighed, pained.

“And look at me.” She set the grocery bags teetering on the kitchen bench, next to Anne’s calculus homework, and stepped back woefully. “Just look!” She opened her arms wide to show the vivid red splotch down her front where a punnet of berries had squashed against her and leaked, and then gestured at the locks of hair blown out of her formerly neat bun by a sudden, malicious breeze into a dirty-blonde mare’s-nest. “I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes in the elevator!”

“The Most Beautiful Man in the World lives in this building?” Anne asked, retrieving a bottle of red from the bags and beheading it with a bottle-opener with a few quick twists of her wrists.

“And I look disgusting!” Ana wailed.

**

Looking disgusting was at least half the point the second time she saw the Most Beautiful Man in the World, Ana and Anne coming back from their themed Fun Run with a friend from the Economics stream. Near Hallowe’en, the organisers had gone with a Walking Dead theme and Ana brooded with satisfaction over the cash raised for the Student Aid Society’s discretionary fund. Even so, her legs vibrated with weariness and she sweated under the grey paint and pustules of her face-paint and layered rags. She needed a hot shower and a cold beer, possibly in a different order. Anne’s Snow White costume was strangely immaculate, her ice-white skin pristine and her dainty fangs neat against blood-red lips. Tiny, yellow-haired Flea had declined going full-method - her spring-metal foot clicked on the tiles of the foyer, and the decaying skirts of her bullion-embroidered coat swung under the biggest hat Ana had ever seen.

“Hey, I know that guy,” Flea commented, scratching her livid red ‘hanging scar’ with a grubby thumb.

Across the foyer a man in a very sharp suit, curly hair brushed into a semblance of restrained waves, lounged against a painted pillar, his hands loosely clasped before him like a devil asking for your soul and promising to take care of it _real good._ As they stared he raised one elegant eyebrow, a strange fey light in his black eyes, and a small flame appeared in his cupped hands.

Ana came from money, which meant a lot of things. One of those things was years of childhood deportment lessons which served her now, her back falling naturally straight and easy as a length of pearls on a silken thread in this unexpectedly stressful situation. Amidst the hammering of her pulse she noticed distantly that one fetid ear had fallen off and landed on her shoulder, to progress in easy steps to the floor. Elegant as a gazelle, serene as an elephant, she shifted her weight to cover the ear with one besneakered foot. It squeaked.

“Is she breathing?” asked Flea.

“So pretty," Anne murmured into Ana's ear. She could feel her friend’s lips curve into a smile. "Don’t you just want to take him home? And -”

“...‘s” said Ana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _the decaying skirts of her bullion-embroidered coat swung under the biggest hat Ana had ever seen._ \- she borrowed the hat from Porthos, but the coat is what Flea wears for everyday.


	2. Laundry

Ana manoeuvred her wicker basket through the living room, blinkered by the lemon-scented pile of clothes stacked inside it. She side-stepped the curly-legged side table with the vase of dainty forget-me-knots, avoiding the fluffy grey tail she knew would be there, but then tripped over a denim-clad leg.

“Um, sorry!” She grabbed for falling linens.

“‘Salright,” said the owner of the leg. Constance lay on the floor, arms and legs out like a starfish abandoned by the water, her bright-dark hair flowing around her shoulders and her blue flannel shirt spread out like a sacrificial robe.

Anne perched on the couch above, her feet tucked neatly beneath her, and dipped a spoon into a bowl of blueberry icecream. “Jack Bonacieux asked her out,” she volunteered.

_ Tell me she said - _

_“No._ I said _No,”_ Constance said wearily. “That was last week.” Ana let her shoulders relax and found a space to put her laundry. “Then he said that he couldn’t flat with me anymore, it was just so painful to him to see me, like,  _ every day. _ Turns out the only name on the lease is ‘Bonacieux’.” She shut her eyes against the world.

“He didn’t.”

“He did,” said Constance. "Fuck my life.”

“Fuck every life,” said Anne, generously. Then, flatly, “You’re sleeping here tonight. Our fold-out couch is  _ your _ fold-out couch.”

“I could kiss you.”

“It is nothing.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Ana. You’re blushing, and have been since you came in. Have you been having unpure, unchaste thoughts somewhere I want to know about?”

“No no no,” said Ana, waving her hands frantically. “Besides, we should talk about Constance’s problems.”

From the floor, Constance’s head cranked upright as she opened her eyes. “No,” she said seriously, “I could use the distraction. I really, really could.”

“I-saw-the-Most-Beautiful-Man-in-the-World-again,” Ana said in a rush. “In the laundry room.”

“Oh,” said Constance, “that guy that goes to my church? I didn’t know he lived round here.”

“He’s religious, huh?”

Constance shrugged, and her head dropped back to the carpeted floor with a thunk. “I go there for the windows. Prettiest stained glass in a twenty mile radius. So what did you two talk about?”

Ana looked down and mumbled, “(we didn’t)”

Anne set down her icecream and unwound herself from the seat. Setting a finger to Ana’s chin she tilted her friend’s face upwards and said seriously, “Did you accidentally on purpose drop your best lacy panties?”

“I have no best lacy panties; I have sensible cottton panties and this is the first time I felt the lack of them. And no, I did not talk to him.” She gestured at her Laundry Day attire, flannel pyjama bottoms printed with yellow duckies that had been washed well past ‘comfortable’ and a Ninja Dragon Riders t-shirt no-one would admit to owning which had a mysterious purple stain on one elbow. “Would you?”

“Hm,” said Anne, inscrutably.

“We just folded laundry, while I pretended not to see him and I think he was rendered blind by my clothing. That man is an ironing  _ machine. _ Snap, snap, flick, swish, done!”

“That doesn’t sound impressive technique to  _ me.” _

“His beautiful  _ hands,” _  wailed Ana.

“Hey.” Constance waved feebly from the floor. “Can I borrow a clean blouse then? I’m shut out of the house since Jacky-boy changed the locks on me, and I have to give a presentation tomorrow.”

Ana and Anne looked down at her. They looked at each other. “We’ll get your stuff,” they chorused.

“Locks, yeah?” said Constance.

“Oh,” said Anne, eyes innocent as a kitten. “We might get lucky with a key under a doormat or something. Or an unlatched window. You never know what might turn up.”

Ana picked up Constance’s ankles and gently hauled her in front of the side table where lurked Pearl the Cat, who blinked anxiously at Constance and then stepped cautiously out to settle recumbent on her chest, purring low in her throat. “Let us take care of you, Constance,” Ana said seriously.

As they shut the door behind them, she heard Constance say  _ “Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiickk.” _ It was that kind of an evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aramis’ internal monologue at this point was: “OMG, the _deshabille_ of Laundry Day only makes her look cuter! How is this POSSIBLE? She never speaks to me - am I a creeper? Do I smell?! ARGH I totally smell! Keep it together, Aramis, play it cool you can still rescue this. IMPRESS HER WITH YOUR SUPERIOR LAUNDRY FOLDING TECHNIQUE.


	3. Balcony

They perched comfortably on the balcony in the sunshine, peering lazily through the flower-shaped grill of the low barrier like Spanish ladies of the 10th century. Anne, having finished the last of her problem-sets an hour ago, wiggled her toes and considered three different shades of crimson polish. Constance spoke low and serious on her phone. Ana had retrieved her horn-rim reading glasses, which rested her eyes and also made her feel intelligent, and was scanning with disfavour a paean to the trickle-down theory in very small type. Pearl, lured outside by the company, sat under the wrought-iron stand which held the plant pots, her fluffy grey tail twitching at the tip.

Constance shut her phone with a sudden snap.

“Turns out Jack Bonacieux is telling everyone I didn’t go out with him because I’m a lesbian,” she said, her rosy lips flattened to a straight line.

“You also have standards,” said Ana, not looking up from her textbook, and then covered her mouth uncertainly.

Constance toyed with the hem of her shirt.

“Do you _want_ to be a lesbian?” Anne asked lazily, stretching out her toes and painting them with quick sure strokes, _schlick schlick._ A lock of curly dark hair escaped from her loose, pencil-skewered coiffure. The flower shadow cast by the iron moved over her profile as she glanced again through the grating.

“I know I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right.”

“Do you want him to have any say in your life?” asked Ana.

Constance wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure I’m much of anything,” she said. “It all seems a lot of work. And I have to maintain grades for my scholarship, so...”

Anne rose, fluid, onto her knees and looked over the balcony wall for a clearer view of the green quad below. “I’ll make this easy for you,” she said. “Which would you like to take home, the hot redhead or the hot brunet?”

Constance got up on her knees also, rather like a meerkat beside Anne, and looked down at the couple below. “It’s not like I really _know_ either of them…” She trailed off.

Ana shut her book with a definitive snap and joined them. “No, don’t -” said Constance.

It was - the Most Beautiful Man in the World - talking with a fire-haired woman on the grass, red fibre-glass bows slung on their shoulders by the stringers with quivers of fluorescent-pink-fletched arrows at their hips. They faced into each other, body language relaxed and comfortable, easy in their own skin and easy with each other. As Ana watched, the Most Beautiful Man threw back his head and laughed, bright and joyous.

 _He’s a happy laugher,_ Ana thought, _Mother of Mercy help me. He’s a happy laugher and I’m not supposed to fall in love._  

As she watched the redhead - was that one of the TAs from the Religious Studies Department? Adele Basset? - the redhead worked at the cuff of a shooting glove and grimaced prettily. She held it out and the Most Beautiful Man took her wrist and released the catch, winking at her as he drew the glove off her fingers.

It was too far to tell, but Ana wondered if Adele was the kind of redhead who had freckles, small ones, like faint stars in otherwise milky skin, the kind one could kiss as the crispness of her white shirt was eased off one shoulder. She wondered what the Most Beautiful Man would look like, if his deft hands worked at those tiny silver buttons. He was a freckle-kisser Ana was certain, and then he’d look up, his dark eyes hot with intent and he’d smile, and then Adele’s light, remote gaze would fall upon her also and -

Ana sat down with a thud.

“She’s so cute when she blushes,” said Anne to Constance.

“Did you set that up?” Constance asked.

Anne smiled and shrugged.   

"Who're those?" Constance wondered, looking down again. "The big guy with the grin looks familiar - oh, right, Flea's foster-sib - which makes the one glaring like the sunlight kicked his mum..."

Ana saw her old friend's fingers whiten on the iron rail, and knew.

"Athos," Anne rasped. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this ‘verse Adele and Aramis are amicable exes, having had a long conversation the year before where they concluded that the sex was a m a z i n g but that he had a lot more feelings for her than she ever was going to have for him, some tears were shed, there was one last round of a m a z i n g s e x and a month later they started having dates that involved, I dunno, owning the laser-tag court, or free-climbing tall university buildings at midnight. Adrenaline junkies in friend-love, basically. (She would feel flattered to know she was part of someone’s bisexual freakout.)


	4. Underwater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember when this was supposed to be all fluffy and light. I blame Milady.

One time Ana saw the Most Beautiful Man in the World when she looked actually quite nice. She was in an evening dress of shades of blue ranging from midnight to royal with a skirt that swirled around her calves, and her favourite pearl earrings swayed from her earlobes. Her kitten heels sank into an unexpected patch of muck; street lights and neon signs advertising garish services and offers of the flesh reflected back from the drowned tarmac. She shivered in the borrowed denim jacket.

It was a complicated night.

Anna bit her lip and looked left and right hurriedly. She wasn’t lost exactly - had the map up on her phone - but she didn’t know this place and felt as alien as if she’d been dropped into deep water, unsure if any light was an anemone or the lure of an anglerfish. A crowd of extremely drunk, rowdy young men turned onto the main street and she ducked into an alley. _Stupid,_ she thought to herself, _stupid, stupid._ Halfway down a light flicked on, in the opening of a service entrance. The metal door scraped open and a young woman stepped out, blonde hair bright and chemically curled, with eyes that might be blue in kinder light, wearing a skirt a little too short and a blouse a little too tight; she stood contrapposto on the steps, fumbling with a battered carton of cigarettes and a plastic lighter.

Two hands came out of the black behind her and settled, soft as birds, on the woman’s shoulders. Her restless hands stilled. Behind her, a step above, the Most Beautiful Man’s face appeared, his too-long hair falling into his eyes. Gently, so very gently, he bent and kissed the crown of her head.

 _The hidden places of the stairs,_ Anna thought, finding words in bible verses. _O my dove, who art in the cleft of the rocks, in the hidden places…_ She felt a profound sense of intruding on a moment never meant for others.

“Found her!!”

Anna’s head snapped around. Constance stood in the mouth of the alley, gesturing urgently. Anna picked up her gauzy skirts and ran.

It was a complicated night.

 

**

 

They got back home around four, their brightly coloured shoes clopping wearily on the tiles of the entrance hall. Ana had one arm over Constance’s shoulder, walking gingerly with a twisted ankle.

 _“Go fuck a fish,”_ she muttered softly, as the door opened.

Anne sat in their living room on a reversed chair, knees splayed across it as if she were horse-riding and her arms crossed on the back of it. A battered leather jacket smelling of cigarettes and cheap beer lay, arms limp, on the couch. A dark singlet left her arms and shoulders bare, to show a fleur-de-lis tattoo in blurry dots on the swell of the muscle. A gash high on her back oozed faintly, explaining the reek of blood in their pretty room; Flea came out,  her yellow hair scraped back from her high forehead and her metal foot thunking dully against the carpet, with a blue plastic bowl full of steaming water, a bottle of disinfectant, and a tea-towel printed with daisies.

“You’re all right,” Ana breathed.

“For a given value of,” Flea said dryly.

Anne snarled, showing her teeth. Flea clipped the back of her head, hard enough to rock her forward, swearing. “Idiot,” Flea said dispassionately. “Once you’re out you _stay_ out, you little fool.”

“It’s taken care of,” Anne said sullenly. They both glanced at a metal bin, its smouldering contents somehow failing to set off the fire alarm.

Ana and Constance looked at each other.

“Is there something I need to know?” Ana asked Anne carefully.

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, isn’t that right?” Anne’s lip curled and her voice came guttural and harsh. “Just look at you, rich girl, playing around with your pet crim. Keeping me like a tiger on a leash, yeah? There you are all _edgy_ to impress your filthy rich friends, and then you can glory in how kind and _virtuous_ you are my generous… _patroness.”_

 _“Is there something I need to know?”_ Ana repeated.  

“It’s settled,” Anne said grimly.

Ana nodded and stalked into her bedroom. She rooted under her bed and pulled out with two hands the _proper_ medical kit, the one the size of a suitcase, and dragged it into the living room. She staggered slightly when it caught in the door, looked up to see Anne drop a hand quickly from her eyes and look away. At her feet Constance eased off her filthy boots, one hand awkward with scraped knuckles and bruised bones. They’d have to ice and wrap that too, Ana thought to herself.

“You trust too easily,” Anne said, still looking away, and hissed when Flea wiped disinfectant across her shoulder.

“... Not anymore,” Ana said. “I promise you.”

"My name is Anne," her friend said, "and I'm -"

"Yes." 

 

**

 

She saw the Most Beautiful Man in the World in passing as she trudged, pained with exhaustion, from the furnace in the basement after cleaning out the contents of Anne’s rubbish bin properly.

He didn’t look up as she passed by in the remains of her evening dress but waited, hands in pockets, for a turn with their domesticated inferno. He stank of cheap perfume, and sex, and in the dull mechanical light he looked sallow, weary as an angel might be who visited relatives in hell.

It had been so much easier when all she did was objectify him.

She glanced back, watching him toss a packet of letters and pictures into the fire, and then hurried on. Some secrets weren’t meant to be shared.


	5. Boxing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait - have limited brain, and it was in use elsewhere. Some age-bending.

“You could try talking to him,” said Constance’s young cousin, Fleur. She craned back her head to look at Ana on the bleacher above her. She had wound her flaxen hair into an array of twisted plaits and ribbons that loosened to flow over her thin shoulders. It was very pretty; it did nothing to stop her ears sticking out. (Ana thought with nostalgia of her own fifteenth year.)

“But it has gotten so very awkward,” said Ana, sadly.

“Miss Ninon says that communication and emotional honesty are the foundation of a good relationship.”

“Sometimes we aren’t looking for a _good relationship,”_ Anne purred, stretching out one leg clad in denim so tight it might have been painted on, “but instead a good -”

Ana clapped her hands over Fleur’s ears and glared at the woman beside her.

Anne blinked kittenish eyes. “- happy tale of pining and, um, theatrical speeches.”

“Or sex,” said the woman beside them drily, her voice low, rich, and musical. Mrs Pepin kept her fingers working at the fine white wool strung on her knitting needles, her loose flowery skirt demure around her ankles. “The sex is better if you trust and like your lover.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ana said meekly. The hall, lit by garish fluorescents, echoed with voices bouncing off the hard walls and floor.

Below them, Fleur took away their hands and jigged in her seat. “Is that Cousin Constance?” she asked, as the heavy safety doors of the gym opened.

Ana shook her head, consulting her photocopied programme, as two wiry figures in shorts, singlets, heavy gloves, and protective headgear came in and ducked through the stretchy ropes of the boxing ring at the centre of the hall. “That’s the last of the Junior Juniors,” she said. Beside her Mrs Pepin tensed, folding her knitting carefully away. “Yours?” she asked softly.

“Mm,” the lady said, eyes intent, as a big cuddly man with gentle eyes in a referee shirt blew a whistle and the two fighters began dancing around, testing each other’s guards with quick flitting strokes. “My Simone started learning last year. I wanted rock-climbing. Or clarinet.”

“She’s good,” said Anne, judging the pair of them.

“She is looking for her father,” Mrs Pepin said, sadly. “He was a boxer, once.”

“Miss Ninon says family is important but the bonds of fellowship are the ones we choose, so -”

Mrs Pepin stirred in her seat.

Anne tucked a dark curl of hair behind her ear and purred, “So tell me Young Fleur, does Miss Ninon teach all you girls how to -”

“No,” said Ana.

“It’s just a joke,” Anne said sulkily.

“She’s fifteen,” said Ana, “and it isn’t funny.” She winced as the smaller fighter was clipped over the head and reeled back, her opponent pressing the advantage. Mrs Pepin sat very still, her fingers laced so tightly together her knuckles showed white.

“It will be alright,” Ana muttered, though whether to the lady or herself was unclear. “She’s strong, she can come back from this.”

Beside her, Anne called, “Punch from the hips, damn you!”

Down in the ring, the whistle blew: “Knockout!” The referee held up a skinny girl’s arm in victory. Mrs Pepin sighed in relief. Ana and Anne bumped fists in celebration and then leaned forward so Fleur could join in, in a complicated tangle of hands.

When the scoring was done the teenage girl, her face as bright as a new copper penny, dashed up to Mrs Pepin. “Did you see, Mum, did you see me? When I - and then - and the whooshy bit -” She waved her hands for emphasis. Mrs Pepin wrapped her arms around her, her hands smoothing gently over the tight braids of her daughter’s hair.

“Congratulations on a good bout,” said Ana, smiling.

“My Dad was a boxer, too!” Simone said eagerly, turning in her mother’s arms. “He went missing when I was young but then we found out he died in a building collapse when that bomb went off and he saved people's’ lives and -” She gulped air. “I want to be a champion like he was.”

“He was a gentle man,” her mother said firmly.

“That too,” said Simone, leaning back into Mrs Pepin’s soft bulk.

The outer doors hissed open, bringing an odd flare of winter daylight to the fluorescent lighting of the gym. Anne's red lips curled into an automatic snarl as a shaggy-haired man in a dark button-down shirt came in and leaned against the wall glowering at the world.

"He's staring right at us," said Ana, uneasily.

"His eyes, like gimlets," said Fleur, biting her lower lip.

"You mean that dwarf that runs the delicatessen on Cable Street...?" asked Simone. Her and Fleur's eyes met, and they grinned hugely.

“It’s fine,” said Anne, stretching out her legs. “Athos could never bear to wear contacts. He can’t see either of us at this distance.” She draped herself ornamentally against the bleachers.

“But _he_ can...” said Ana.

The Most Beautiful Man in the World entered also, wrapped in layers of a fleece hoodie with a leather jacket on top as if hiding from the cold outside. His eyes slid to his friend as he muttered something and stuck his hands in his pockets. There was no trace of the weariness Ana had seen the last time she encountered him, burning letters in the furnace. Was it hidden depths and introspection hidden by a cheerful mask of Public Manners, or a short attention span…?

Ana touched her fingers to the inside of Anne’s wrist. “Is my ridiculous crush an issue?”

Anne’s eyes slid to her and her lovely eyebrows lifted. “Are you planning on taking away my entertainment? Seriously?” She glanced again at her  _bete noire_  Athos and struck a different ornamental pose.

“You could try _talking_ to him,” Fleur interjected, with the benevolent, dreadful condescension of youth.

“Talk to who?” asked Simone, leaning in.

“Ah, well, you see -”

"Oh! Constance is up!"

Their friend climbed easily into the ring, even in her headgear easily spotted by her braid of dark auburn hair, moving with the strong swinging gait of a young leopard. Her opponent followed, a boy half a head taller but his tanned limbs were spindly with a recent growth spurt. He looked straight at Athos and the Most Beautiful Man in the World - the one impassive, the other jigging on his feet like a hyperactive fourteen-year-old - and seemed to swell with courage and pride and conviction.

The whistle blew. 

Ana leapt to her feet, lifting a day-glo green giant hand and brandishing it proudly. “KICK HIS ASS!” she roared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know anything about boxing? This particular club bases its grades on experience and weight, so Constance is considered appropriate to match with young d’Artagnan, who has yet to achieve his full growth. (His ears, like Fleur’s, stick out. Constance finds it unnervingly endearing.)
> 
> _”I wanted rock-climbing. Or clarinet.”_ \- I have it on solid authority that clarinet lessons are a _horrible_ thing to do to a child.
> 
>  _”He can’t see either of us at this distance.” She draped herself ornamentally against the bleachers._ \- This is as light-side as Milady gets, but she still has to play games sometimes. Give her this. (Athos’ short-sightedness is borrowed from some stray head-canon that I saw floating about with regards to his soft-focus flashbacks in s1 and Milady’s ability to sit in the crowd in 1.08 without him noticing…)
> 
> **
> 
> I'm at a bit of a fork in the road here. I started this story with a premise of 'fluffy, casual lechery and humorous pining' but some more serious themes have started creeping in. I don't want to disappoint readers who started this thinking they were getting strawberries, just strawberries, when I've started handing you apples and pears and jackfruit...
> 
> So - if you've got this far, your opinion matters to me. What would you like - cleaving more strongly to the fluff? Or letting the darker stuff like dead husbands/fathers and the like be welcome?


	6. Daydream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what, screw it, I need to post something, awkward tone and all.
> 
> Enjoy!

_ Ana trotted up the last of the stairs, shaking water out of her ears from the sudden rain shower. Her hair hung in draggled strings around her shoulders; her shoes squelched. _

_ The door to her flat swung open and she staggered in, grateful for the cloud of lightly scented warmth and light inside. Constance looked up from an overstuffed love-seat, a flower-patterned teacup in one hand, a saucer in the other. “I’m just back from church,” she said, smiling. “We had an interesting morning.” _

_ From the door, all Ana could see of Anne on the couch was the back of her head, a mop of unruly, damp hair, and the collar of her favourite kasuri kimono - the one with pale ghost-butterflies resist-dyed into the indigo threads. She gave her friend’s damp hair an affectionate tousle as she walked past, pulling her soggy shirt over her head. “You can tell me all about it later,” she said smiling, pulled a towel from the linen cupboard, and wandered into the kitchen for a cup of her own. _

_ “You would not believe the day I’ve had,” she told Anne, who was at the kitchen bench cutting generous slices of ginger cake.  _

_ Anne smiled like the Mona Lisa and added another plate to her tea-tray. She had out the best china - an old panacea for this kind of weather. “We were caught in the rain, too,” she said.  _

_ “Yes, the weather was so nice this morning, I think it caught everyone by surprise. But! I got my thesis in by the deadline!” _

_ “Well done you,” said Anne, still smiling. _

_ “Hang on,” said Ana, and peeked out of the kitchen. Still on the couch, with ankles neatly crossed and teacup held daintily, the indigo kimono and the mop of unmanageable hair owned the Most Beautiful Man in the World, who sat frozen.  _

_ Ana backed back into the kitchen, scraped her stringy hair off her bare shoulders and damp camisole, and wailed. _

“I like it,” said Anne. “It’s a classic romantic comedy Meet Cute - wet clothes, startlement, accidental cross-dressing, and - what’s most important - you and I will be there to laugh.” 

She stretched her toes in the soft green grass, sans shoes, sans stocking, trouser cuff rolled to show an elegant, strong ankle.  A last hiccup of summer warmth had drawn them outside, and they had decamped to a local river bank for lunch.

“I don’t buy it,” said Constance, ticking points off her fingers. “One, we’d have to time her and him both getting caught in the rain at the same time. Two, he’d also need to be missing his keys at this exact time.”

Anne’s lips curled into a moue. “We might get lucky,” she said innocently.

“Three,” Constance continued, “we’d either be stuck there ‘talking about the weather’ over their blushing and their stammering or, or, we’d be sloping off to give them some decent privacy and it would be cold and wet and raining -”

“We might get lucky and find the key to his apartment and have tea and ginger cake there…?”

“That’s breaking and entering. And.  _ And. _ When would you ever lend your favourite dressing gown to anybody.”

“Hmph. Your point is a strong one.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Ana knelt on the tartan blanket and laid out the plates, setting the roast beef sandwiches, two small chocolates, and a small bunch of grapes on each one.

“Does  _ Pearl _ get a say in this?”

The cat blinked at them slowly, couchant, half in and half out of her carrying case, with a scarlet lead dropping from her walking harness to lie in a neat curve around her forefeet.

“Hmm. Perhaps she could act as an intermediary? Trip lightfoot along the fire escapes and come back with a strange collar dangle and another man’s flea treatment on her fur...”

“Excuse me.”

_ “Preciosa, _ the collar dangle says.  _ Excuse me!! _ you reply, in a sharply worded note torn from the back of an old envelope, folded five times and knotted around her collar,  _ her name is Pearl! _ She comes back the next morning, uninterested in her scientifically-formulated kitty kibble. And you feel  _ betrayed. _

“But wait - there is a daintily folded missive hidden in her fur, a little origami rose which you open to find a brief but poignant meditation on the sermon of the Pearl of Great Price. Moved, you scribe your favourite lines from the Song of Solomon onto a…”

“Dry feed bill,” said Constance helpfully, unscrewing a thermos.

“A dry feed bill,” agreed Anne. “The notes flit back and forth, carried by an increasingly plump feline,  _ enceinte _ with the weight of suppressed desire and suggestive bible interpretation. And then -”

“How long is this going?” Ana asked.

“A flustered late night visit to the vet, emergency surgery, disconsolate tears. Constance and I find you in the morning curled up like two lost kittens - among the other lost kittens - a happy ending! You weep again, for joy, and then you take him home and -”

“I take your meaning,” said Ana, holding out a tin mug enamelled in blue and red.

“How did you two meet?” asked Constance curiously, pouring a stream of amber tea into Ana’s mug. 

“At a support group,” said Anne. Ana looked up. “For retired government assassins.”

“She's joking,” said Ana hurriedly.

“Of course I am. Me, retire? With my youthful beauty?”

“You will be knocking them dead for years to come,” said Ana gravely.

Constance looked uncertainly between them. 

“I was going to try catching him at church,” she said at last.

Anne glared at her sidelong. “This is not an afternoon for sensible proposals,” she said severely, sipping from her own tin cup.

“Would it help if we imported your brother from Spain as a go-between, Jane Austen-style? They could bond over, um, fowling-pieces and you might be there for a brief greeting in between hunting and cigars...”

Ana and Anne looked at each other. Ana shuddered. Anne coughed delicately.

“I doubt that would turn out… well.”

Ana rose fluidly to her feet and paced back and forth. “Leaving aside the question of my relatives who are… what they are… it would probably turn out badly,” she declared, waving her hands. “I’m terrible at relationships, you have no idea. I should just… put this to bed I think.”

Anne set down her cup and picked up a parasol, and watched as Ana paced. She found her moment and hooked its curved handle into Ana’s collar so that she tumbled backwards into an unexpectedly gangly heap, with her head in Anne’s lap. Somewhere across the river there was a splash, which she ignored. Pearl fled inside her carry case and Constance spluttered.

“I can’t promise it won’t be awful,” Anne said softly, smoothing locks of hair back from Ana’s temples. “And I can’t promise it will be any better than tedious and grey and disillusioning if you find out he’s a real person with holey socks and a fondness for weird and smelly foodstuffs. But. If you don’t try this, you’ll never find out if it might be beautiful. This is  _ me _ saying this, so pay attention. And, you know, if he hurts you -”

“You’ll eat his heart in the marketplace?” said Ana, in a small voice.

“What are girlfriends for?”

**

Athos stared with disfavor at the concentric circles spreading out in the smooth green water by the side of the punt. He squinted at the blurry figures on the side of the river.

“It is That Wonderful Girl again, is it not?”

Porthos nodded, rummaging in the wicker picnic basket for another roast chicken. “Flea runs with her, sometimes. I could introduce -”

“‘But that would be  _ stalking,’” _  quoted Athos in a weary drawl, fumbling for his glasses. 

Porthos found the cheese, and began cutting slices with his pocket knife. “If,  _ hypothetically,” _ he said, “speaking purely in the subjunctive tense, a man were to hear one of his boxing students arrange a riverside outing and - as one of several possible options - propose a party of pleasure on a limpid green river, all set about with willow trees…”

A hand emerged, sans sword, from the ripples, throwing them into a chaos of intersecting troughs and peaks, followed by Aramis’ head, water-logged hair scraped back from his face. He looked stunned, and reached a soggy, jersey-clad arm for the side of the boat.

“C-c-cold…"

“We need a dog,” said Porthos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to think Porthos is an English Lit major.
> 
> ***
> 
> Awright, DaisyNinjaGirl, do I get my cheesecake?
> 
> ***
> 
> Meanwhile, in Monte Cristo Book Club…
> 
> *  
> *  
> *
> 
> Eugenie has a girlfriend!!?!
> 
> Noirtier with the shut-in syndrome is getting a truckload of sympathy and respect.
> 
> The Count just bribed a guy with a lot of money and ALL THE NECTARINES YOU WANT, MY GOOD MAN. YOU WILL NEVER LACK FOR STONE-FRUIT AGAIN.
> 
>  
> 
> (Also, way off base for this fandom, but I found a lovely reading of Post Captain, the second book in the Aubrey-Maturin series and had to stop and cry after chapter 2 because that first real conversation between the Maturin and Diana, so easy and honest and intimate and very very painful, it happened, and this time I know everything that’s going to happen to them and its, its. (Yeah this one’s way off tangent, but any fans of the book!verse will know what I’m talking about.) So, uh, yeah, livejournal is turning into a creeper so I'm book-babbling here instead.)


	7. Interlude: Another Cunning Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I just get fanfic of my fanfic? I did, I did get fanfic of my fanfic. 
> 
> Special thanks to Daisy Ninja Girl for this contribution.

“So it’s like this, yeah?”

_Thump thud crumph_

“It’s late, just a bit windy.  We’re piling around, our arms full with blankets, to take Aramis off to look at meteors.  Suddenly, you get this? there’s a loud siren and Aramis’ neighbours come pouring out of the building - the fire alarm is going off, maybe Old Man Treville fell asleep with a ciggie.  Who knows?”

_Thump thud crash_

“Go on,” Porthos grunted as he braced the boxing bag.

“Well, anyway,” d’Artagnan went on, “all the neighbours are pouring out of the building in various states of, you know, undress, women in black lace nighties needing a young gallant to provide them with warm clothing….” he blinked limpidly, coffee-brown eyes very bright. “ _I_ wouldn’t mind…”

“The term is black lace peignoir,” came a dry voice behind him.  “Who are we talking about exactly?”

“But then we realise - That Wonderful Girl isn’t there!  She’s gone back to rescue her gerbil or something, and then bursting through the doors of the building Aramis strides, back lit by flames, the smoke rising higher, heroically -”

“No.”  The older man spun in a quick roundhouse kick and landed one foot neatly over d’Art’s adolescent head onto the bag.  The unexpected momentum pushed Porthos off his feet with an _Oof_.

“We are not stalking, we are not _setting fires_ for God’s sake, and we are not putting someone’s cat in harm’s way.  No gerbil, young infant, but a cat whose fur shines with the pearlescent glow of a thousand Bizet operas…”  Aramis rubbed his face and began his own stretching routine, lithe and easy in a worn singlet and striped track pants.  “And who exactly do you want to see decked out in a black lace peignoir?  We’re all uni folks in my building, thou unlick’d cub.”

“Connie,” Porthos grunted.  “He’s got a thing about another of my students.  She’s too old and smart for you, kid.”

“Hey, I finish high school in a month!  Constance is still an undergrad!”

“Practice that jab combo again,” his teacher instructed.  “Also, 'cause I happen to have an understanding ear and people tell me things, obsessive objectification is prob’ly going to remind certain of my students about certain lousy ex-flatmates who might have a last name like Bonacieux.  This is a friendly heads up from an older wiser soul, you understand - play the long game on this one.”

Aramis frowned.  “Constance from church?  I saw Jack the Rat with the most incredible shiner the other day.  Was that you?”

Porthos grinned, his teeth very white and dimples showing in his cheeks.  “My girl Connie.  Planted her feet right and everything.”


	8. Interlude: Cherry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's fluff. It's so much fluff, I don't even.

“I will trade you a hot meal for physical services,” said Sylvie baldly.

A smile blossomed on Aramis’ face, over the shopping bag cradled in his arms. “Reeeeeally?” he purred.

“Get in here, you great lanky beanpole,” she said, and tugged him through a hip-high gate into her living room. He let her take his shopping bag, a leather satchel still swinging against his hip, and toed off his boots, following her into her carpeted hallway on woollen socks.

“Do I want to know why you smell like a river?” she asked.

“Eheh,” he said rubbing the back of his head. “Trouble with the thing with that stuff. You know me.”

“I really don't,” she answered, smiling, “but I like you.”

He grinned back.  _ “That's  _ alright, then.” His fingers itched as she turned and the tight ringlets of her hair moved over the delicate arches of her shoulder and collarbone, itched for charcoal and paper as she moved, ever unaware of the gazelle which dwelt in her bones.

The shopping bag rustled and he let the itch fall out of his fingers.

His eyes lit on a row of small photos on the wall of the hallway in uniform brass frames, still shiny. “These are new, have you been unpacking?” Then he gasped, at the last in the row, of two older men and a younger Sylvie, their stoic, lined faces a bass ground to the treble of her bright grin. “You know Old Man Treville!” he exclaimed. “ _ How _ do you know Old Man Treville? Is he your godfather? Wandering chess buddy? Second cousin three times removed? Are you his  _ godmother? _ Are you -” his voice dropped conspiratorily - “Were you Treville’s CI…?”

“He spent a night in the cells with me and my da when a protest march went sour, he’s not my godfather, they did play chess, no relation, and he was retired from the police when we first met. And I am not,” she said, calmly but firmly, “nor have I ever been, a narc for the pigs.”

He rocked back on his heels. “Ah. Point taken. (Sorry.)”

“It’s fine,” she said, opening the shopping bag. She raised an eyebrow at the contents. “You're spoiling me,” she said, shifting aside the fortified protein powder, punnets of bright red cherries, and the full-fat yoghurt, and pulled out two blocks of very expensive chocolate. “Aramis.” He padded on into the living room on stocking feet with a slightly guilty set to his shoulders. “I am the opposite of hurting for money right now.”

He shrugged, reaching behind the couch for a battered acoustic guitar with a wide neck and mother-of-pearl flowers set into the amber wood around the sound hole. He settled on the floor with it. “I may have sold something this week. If I wanted to celebrate with two gracious ladies, what of it?”

“That’s three picture-books now, yeah?”

“Pff,” he responded, hands busy with the tuning pegs. “They're only a hobby.”

“Hmm.”

She went into the kitchen and he heard the click of the electric kettle and also a small crunch as she stretched out her back with a sigh.

His fingers moved nimbly on the strings, letting them chime out an old Spanish folksong about a breeze carrying messages between lovers.

“Anytime he's sober, he can come over,” Sylvie said dryly, bringing over a mug painted with a flowering cherry tree. It had an oddly cheerful skeleton resting its back against the trunk and waving, and the steaming black tea inside smelled of oranges. “Within reasonable visiting hours,” she corrected.

“He's still working the program,” Aramis said quietly.

“Okay,” said Sylvie.

“He gets a bit scared, though. Sometimes people are massively good at one thing and utter disasters everywhere else.”

“Anytime Athos is sober,” she repeated.

Aramis morphed the tune into a delicate variation of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”.

“I'm still not running away with you,” she said over her shoulder as she disappeared into the study.

“I am desolate,” he called softly, smiling. His fingers said,  _ I want to be the one to walk in the sun…  _ Presently he heard the tapping of computer keys and a sigh. A burble came from a side room. “Ah, it rises.”

A small child in a yellow polka-dot t-shirt and pink leggings crawled into the living room. “Hello, Miss Clementine,” he said softly. Sylvie’s daughter made a beeline for him, clambering over his legs and putting both her hands on the strings to feel them vibrate. She giggled. Very seriously, he plucked the the heavy wire-bound E-string with his thumb.

**

Two hours later Sylvie hit Send on her latest article and pumped her arms over her head in triumph. She found Aramis in the kitchen, deftly spooning apple mush into Clementine’s mouth. She gurgled when she saw her mother and waved her arms and legs furiously, hitting Aramis’ nose.

“How did you get so good with babies?” Sylvie asked wryly, taking out bowls from the cupboard and filling them with spicy bean casserole from her slow cooker. “Younger siblings or a secret past as a ninja babysitter?”

“Only the  _ best _ babysitters have ninja credentials,” he said seriously, brushing a damp cloth over Clementine’s snub nose and rosebud mouth, and smoothing her tufts of silky mid-brown hair. “There were lots of aunties hanging around where I grew up, all co-parenting each other's little ones. It was very anthropological, prob’ly.”

She raised her eyebrows, encouraging, and something flickered in his eyes. “It doesn't matter where. I was asked to cut ties.”

“Dire.”

He shrugged. “Pauline knew her own mind.”

“That's why you're sad today.”

He shrugged again. “Every figure of romance needs a dash of brooding melancholy to inform his countenance.” He grinned. “It's good for my complexion.”

“Tch.” Sylvie handed him a bowl of cherries and retrieved her daughter, settling the girl on her hip and booping her nose. “I saw That Girl the other day.”

Aramis nearly choked on a cherry.

“That  _ Wonderful _ Girl to be precise,” he said, and, “Who told you, was it Porthos? Or is the tale of my ridiculous crush spreading like osmosis? And where -” his voice cracked into a squeak, “where was this, exactly?”

“It was a Woman's Health meeting.” Sylvie’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “For a pretty white girl who oozes equal parts Old Money and Doing Good she isn't bad. You want me to invite you both to brunch?”

“Argle-bargle-gah,” he said, then covered his mouth with his hand and looked at her woefully. 

“Oh dear,” she said softly, touching his cheek. “That bad.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _as she moved unaware of the gazelle which dwelt in her bones_ \- from “To Maeve” by Mervyn Peake -
> 
> You walk unaware  
> Of the slender gazelle  
> That moves as you move  
> And is one with the limbs  
> That you have.
> 
> You live unaware  
> Of the faint, the unearthly  
> Echo of hooves  
> That within your white streams  
> Of clear clay that I love
> 
> Are in flight as you turn,  
> As you stand, as you move,  
> As you sleep, for the slender  
> Gazelle never rests  
> In your ivory grove.
> 
> // _It had an oddly cheerful skeleton resting its back against the trunk and waving_ \- “There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees! You’ve got to believe it. Well, otherwise you couldn’t possibly believe that cherry trees could bloom so beautifully…” (KAJII Motojirō, 1927)
> 
> // _“Hello, Miss Clementine,” he said_ \- it's traditional to make Sylvie and Athos’ kid Raoul, after 20 Years After, but I’m a rebel without a cause, baby. 
> 
> // _Every figure of romance needs a dash of brooding melancholy_ \- he's referring to a speech from _The Court Jester_ which I suspect, given that it involves a man winning the love of the fair maiden who is his commanding officer by being good with babies (and then they decide To Hell with the noble resistance, they're deposing the evil usurper in time to get married on Sunday), I suspect it is one of Aramis’ favourite movies.
> 
> “At once! (he starts walking off) Wait. Not like that. You are a figure of romance, of spirit and action. But at the same time, humble and tender. You are a man of iron with the soul of a poet. You are adventurous, gay, but with a lover's brooding melancholy, and above all, you must show passion.”


	9. Hawk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cutting this scene in two for length reasons.
> 
> CW: vintage pop-culture references.

The main library of the campus was very old - beautiful! - constructed long before architects thought of including access ramps and elevators more complicated than a dumbwaiter into their blueprints. Many parts of it had been rebuilt in the seventies, with a sturdy low ramp of yellow brick sidling up alongside the shallow grey front steps, for instance, with a non-slip lane of black textured rubber carpeted onto it last year, and a functional, if very cramped, lift crammed awkwardly into the infrastructure of a corner of the building. The remodelling budget had petered out half-heartedly around the fourth floor, however, and, dispirited by the slant of the hipped roof over what was basically an enormous attic, the lift gave up early. One could reach the top via a wrought-iron helix of a staircase, or a ladder hidden in a service cupboard. As most of the stock there was old newspapers long since microfiched and then digitised, most students did not bother. But also, this: Study Room Three, a huddle of ugly brown study carrels under the streaming sunlight of the high flower-figured windows that broke the line of the slanting roof-wall.

Ana had found it two weeks ago, during a scavenger hunt, and fallen in love immediately. It was high; it was airy; it was very, very quiet.

She dropped a pile of books on a desk and a low buzz which she had assumed was part of the heating stopped with a snort. From the other side of the screen which separated the carrels, a light tenor voice said “I’m just resting my eyes.”

“I believe you,” she said, opening the top of her stack, a thick red cloth-bound tome from the seventies.

“Ah, sorry,” the tenor said. “I thought you were my friend; he has a Very Disapproving Stare.”

“Oh dear,” she said. “I’m just me.”

“And very welcome,” he replied. _”Mi ático es tu ático._

 _”Gracias,”_ she answered, shifting into the easy Spanish of her birthplace. _"Study well."_

 _”¡I will try!”_ Across the screen the scratch of a pen began in a stately dance.

“How Disapproving exactly?” she asked after a while, turning a closely written page and fumbling for her horn-rimmed reading glasses.

“It could melt through steel plate,” he said ominously.

“I can see how that would be worrying. My friends just laugh at me about my ridiculous crush,” she confessed, “so I’m hiding up here.”

A rustle and she looked up - a hand had appeared at the top of the wooden screen, palm towards her. “Snap,” he said.

She stood up awkwardly and reached to slap it lightly. “It’s a lot funnier from the outside, I think,” she said, settling back into her chair. “Well. _I_ think it’s funny too.”

“Oh yes,” he said mournfully. “Months of utter hilariousness.”

She sighed in solidarity. They began again, in a slow pavane of turning pages and pen strokes.

Eventually she looked up from a treatise on economic theories in post-war Japan and, curious, leaned to the left where a small gap in the screen allowed a chance to look at her companion in desolate romance. But all she could see was a glimpse of hand and a jacket sleeve as he himself tried to peer through the gap on the other side. She tried the gap at the bottom and caught a glimpse of a lean midriff demurely covered in a grey cotton, a belt, and battered jeans, as he stood to try looking over.

“It’s no good,” she said. (It seemed like cheating to just walk around.) “We are doomed, by night, by day, never quite touching, always together, forever apart…”

“You know that movie!” he said in delight, and she heard his chair squeak as he sat back down.

“But of course.”

Softly, he quoted another line from the movie _Ladyhawke,_ “Well, she might wander into _my_ dreams. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could call her by name and pretend we’d met before?”

“My friends call me Ana,” she answered, smiling.

“My mama called me Rene,” he said. "I'll be the hawk."

"How very non-gendered of you," she said with amusement. She looked at the high windows on Rene’s side of the row of carrels, where the brilliantly coloured flowers adorned a very lovely view. "Oh, because you like heights?"

"Well perhaps that a little," he conceded. "The terror and beauty of falling into the sky - I wonder if that is how being taken by God feels... But I like Isabeau. She handles being hauled around hither and yon with serenity and grace, she decides enough is enough and they're breaking the curse, like, now - and it's hard to contradict someone you care about, believe you me - and let's not forget that time she chased a wolf-hunter into the woods with nothing but a little bit dagger to save someone she loved. Girl's got stuff." He added anxiously, “I’m not cramping your style?”

“I fell in love with Navarre’s horse when I was nine,” she told Rene. “Who wouldn’t want to run a comb through that beautiful flowing mane? And I could totally pull off the grim, spiky, heart-of-marshmallow warrior snarling at everything because they’ve lost something precious look. I could be the shapeshifting wolf.”

“Who did you lose?”

She froze.

“Ah, sorry, too personal.” Fingers appeared in the gap at the bottom of the screen. “Ridiculous crushes are great, providing as they do endless entertainment for our Friends and Relations, am I right?”

“Absolutely,” she whispered, touching his fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // The university I went to was quite old, and the buildings were a combination of beautiful but cramped, with interesting sculpted bits and decorations, and butt-ugly poured concrete jobbies from the seventies, that were maybe a bit better about the lifts but still had awkwardly narrow and inconvenient stairways. That were butt-ugly. And had bad air. Sigh.
> 
> // _hipped roof_ \- like a gabled roof but there aren’t any verticals: all the sides slope into a centre point.
> 
> // _found it two weeks ago, during a scavenger hunt_ \- I’m not saying Flea organised that scavenger hunt in a spirit of under-handed meddling, but I’m not saying she didn’t, either.
> 
> // _always together, forever apart_ \- they’re referring to _Ladyhawke,_ a very lovely old Medieval fantasy movie revolving around a cursed pair of lovers, who take turns being stuck as an animal, just barely seeing each other at the changeover at dawn and sunset.


	10. Strangers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // It occurs to me I’m borrowing some themes from _Love and Other Disasters_ which also has some unrequited lovers that various friends are desperately trying to get to _just meet, just talk to this person, he’s very nice damn your eyes._ And a lot of misunderstandings. (Go watch Love and Other Disasters, it’s very funny and awesomely sweet and has baby!Santiago Cabrera in it.)

“So, your ridiculous crush,” Rene said. “I will show you mine if you show me yours? I want to hear about this paragon.”

“He's stupendous,” Ana said, and began. Even with the reassurance of a complete stranger whom she would never see again, her description turned into a burbling rush of ‘moves all springy-like’ and ‘have you seen how beautiful he is when he laughs, well have you?’

“Um, no,” Rene answered politely. “I don't think I've met him.”

“If you had met the Most Beautiful Man in the World,” Ana replied with great gravity, _“You would know.”_

“I will keep my eyes peeled,” he promised. “What's he like to talk to?”

 _“I've no idea!"_ she wailed.

“Ahh...” he breathed.

“This is where you tell me to just walk up and say Hello, right? It's supposed to be that simple, isn't it?”

Very soft, very calm, he answered, “But it isn't.” He stopped talking, then, and his silence filled the high attic, that smelled of dust and books and sunlight, and made it welcoming.

“There were some things that happened when I was fifteen and I thought I knew what I was doing,” she said at last. “Every step of the way I knew what I was doing until a step too far and I really really didn't. So now I just don't trust that I know what I'm doing. Not when it's someone I really like.”

It was less than frank, but he didn't ask for details. Instead, “Okay,” he said reassuringly from the other side of the partition. “So what’s different now from when you were fifteen?”

“I have a friend who eats hearts,” she said softly.

She heard the amusement in his voice as he answered, “That’s a good start. Do you trust your heart-eating friend’s judgement?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, that’s great. Do you talk to your friend about all of this?”

“… sometimes. We met in a support group. But haven’t we talked about this all through before? And I'm still wibbling away with my problems because I can't stay fixed. She has to be tired of it.”

“Well,” he said seriously, “sadness is like malaria. Sometimes it comes back and there’s nothing to do but grab your quinine and tough your way through. Or acne,” he added thoughtfully, “I hear that’s rough.”

“You never had pimples?!” she said, indignantly.

“We each have our little blessings,” he answered, smug.

She swore at him in archaic, florid Spanish and he laughed in delight. “But seriously,” he added, “If you two met in a support group she probably leans on you, too, at times, even if it doesn't show. And you know, it's okay to _ask_ your friend, if she needs a break from talking, if she feels she's getting what she needs from you. You can just ask.”

“Well if you insist on being _sensible,”_ she grumbled.

“It doesn't happen often,” he declared, “so we should make the most of it!”

Despite herself she giggled. Then, “Now you show me yours,” she commanded, and he folded like an origami butterfly.

“Well you see,” he said. “It’s.” And, “I don’t know, there’s this girl I keep seeing around who walks like a queen. And she is very beautiful and very stately, and also, I see her being kind, and I cannot shake the feeling that she is the love of my life. And I cannot talk to her. I can’t do it. I am the King of Suave but as soon as she appears I stumble and walk into things. And I have this friend, who's threatening to take me to a brunch to meet her and, and every time I think about it I panic.”

“That sounds like the plot of a romantic comedy,” Ana said softly.

“I would laugh if it were not me…” Again, his fingers touched hers through the gap in the screen. “If I talk to her, I think she’ll find out pretty quick.”

She stroked his fingertips lightly. “Find out what?”

“That I’m not made for long-term relationships. Everyone who really knows me tells me that, sooner or later. I’m a bit in love with fantasies, maybe. In love with _this_ fantasy. But who really wants to find out that the best they can be is someone’s brief, cheerful memory? A good lay. Someone to invite to parties, not to keep, just like...” He laughed lightly, forcing rueful amusement into his voice. “Look at me, being all melodramatic. There are far worse fates than being stuck as the popular kid.”

Ana didn’t laugh.

“You know,” she said, not letting him draw his hand back, “that’s not the impression I get from you at all. Because I’ve been talking to you for half an hour and what you sound like is _loyal._ And kind, to someone you hardly know, and thoughtful. She should be proud to meet you!” she said fiercely.

She squeezed his fingers. “What do you need to hear, right this minute?” she asked softly.

“That I have _brilliant_ friends-who-used-to-be-lovers and it can all work out okay, even if she doesn't love me best.”

“Rene,” she said, “if you are, with your friends, anything like you are with me, they can't do anything but _adore_ you.” She heard a thunk against the screen that was probably his head coming to rest and let herself droop until she matched him. After a time, she tapped the desk lightly with her free hand and said,“I think I have it. When The Brunch happens, you shall invite me and I shall invite my Girl Posse, because I have one, and it will be a nice friendly meal with Just Friends. And any time you say something Not Suave I shall be there saying something wibbly and distracting to draw attention away and you can smile at her.”

She thought about it. “I can't promise she's going to be The One, or even a Just For Now. But I can promise a fun brunch where someone has your back. And you can for me do the same, at um, Social Croquet or something.”

“Like _Strangers on a Train?”_

“But less murdery.”

“Of course,” he agreed very solemnly.

She smiled at him through the screen and squeezed his hand.

Then a trill of bells sounded - the phone in her pocket. “Hang on,” she said, tugging it from her cardigan pocket and thumbing it on. Her eyebrows rose. “Um, I think something’s on fire.” Reluctantly, she let go of Rene’s warm hand. “I'mverysorrybutIhavetogonextweekperhaps?”

She scooped up her books into her satchel and ran for the exit, taking the ladder in the cupboard for speed.

Rene - or Aramis as he was better known at the university - untangled himself from his chair and then from a spill of dislodged books. By the time he got out of the Study Room Three he couldn't see Ana on the wrought-iron stairs down. “Not even a lost shoe,” he said mildly.

He was writing his number in cursive to leave in her carrel, with a sketch of a little girl with fierce pigtails, a huge black horse, and a beautiful (manly) falcon for lagniappe, when with a polite chirrup his own phone rang.

His eyebrows rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _“If you had met the Most Beautiful Man in the World,” Ana replied with great gravity, “You would know.”_ \- and when Aramis finds out who she's talking about, will he preen or blush scarlet in utter mortification…?


	11. Petal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I had a weird 'optional continuity' thing going on for this and the next chapter, but thinking it over they both happened. It's that kind of setting.
> 
> Special thanks to Daisy Ninja Girl for plotting out the “Petal” scenario, and Anathema Device for troubleshooting the tricky bits.
> 
> // CW: Misuse of accommodations made for health issues; seriously wacky debating setups; inconsiderate texting.

Aramis’ older, grimmer friends had long since stopped chiding him for doodling on his note-paper while in a debate. It helped his process. Or at least, it helped him not vibrate out of his chair while his team-mates were talking, which was always desirable.

So: sketching. Behind a stack of textbooks and papers that shielded him from the auditorium, his pencil moved. He kept his expression very serious - from most viewpoints he _was_ taking notes, so that was alright.

It was warm in the scruffy auditorium, even with the small crowd come for the short-time debates used for the heats of the tournament, and light slanted down from the high windows lighting up dancing dust motes.

Athos was currently speaking, his sarcastic wit almost hidden in the deceptive mildness of his measured voice. He was keeping pace with his opposite number, a thick-necked TA from the Religious Studies Department who might make a truly extraordinary cleric one day but in the meantime was a right terror among the undergraduates. Jim LaBarge's debating technique had a certain grim unstoppability but so far Athos was holding his own easily, deftly side-stepping the occasional verbal juggernaut and counter-attacking with grace. Aramis let his pencil dance, sketching his friend as a dainty fencer, the narrow point of his rapier zipping around the grinning giant that sought to crush him with a flaming club. He added on the bottom a strip of doodles of a sad dragon coming up to a tower with a princess at the top, with her curly hair flying in the wind, who invited him to a tea party. Athos-dragon sat with his tail wound primly around his feet and sipped tea very carefully so as not to jostle the princess’s young and fearless daughter tugging his ears. (Aramis spent perhaps more time than he should on that last, but he was always hoping.)

He kept his head down as the door opened, squeaking, and late-comers shuffled in, and tried to look studious for the new folk.

The first speakers were winding down and Porthos, beside him, flexed comfortable muscles in his bright pink _Go Petunias!_ t-shirt. A shuffle of feet, some murmurs, and Porthos’ intended opposite, a long-haired weasel by the name of Jussac, stepped down with a claim of low blood-pressure and dizziness. Professor Feron the moderator allowed it, his eyes bright with amusement. Long crooked fingers played with an ebony cane as Jussac stepped down smirking and a surprise alternate came in. Porthos looked up, betrayed, as an old… friend of his, Charon, walked up to the stage, beautiful head held high.

Aramis set his hand on Porthos’ warm shoulder and squeezed lightly. “It’s only a debate,” he murmured.

Porthos covered Aramis’ hand with his own. “Yeah, I know. He could of told me, though. I just don’t like it when he plays games like this.” Standing, he requested a five-minute recess on account of an asthma attack was making him feel a bit off. He produced an inhaler like a lawyer displaying a murder weapon and Feron, rolling his eyes, allowed it.

The team shuffled papers and Porthos sucked dramatically on his inhaler as they quickly discussed team strategy. While shifting his books, Aramis realised that his phone was on the table, lit up with a message.

 **I’m so sorry I ran out like that. My house guest’s Cousin Fleur** **  
did something with the sous-vide wand and set off the fire alarm.**

It was the girl from the library! The nice one, who swore in Spanish. Carefully, guiltily, Aramis tapped on his phone.

**I don’t know what a sous-video wand is, but I hope t wasn’t  
          too dire**

***sous-vide**

He wished Porthos all the luck in the world, but at least this time his friend wasn’t facing off against Emilie Duras, who was so very sweet and adorable, and smiled so kindly as she said such appalling things. It was like kicking a puppy, a puppy which advocated mass-murder, and there was no way to win when it came down to it or even to feel good about losing. Aramis peeked at her, sitting calm and benevolent next to LaBarge, and took refuge in his phone.

**It’s going to be alright. The cat was a little startled and our kitchen  
smells smoky, that’s all. Fleur liked her new haircut.**

**And I really liked your picture. It is on my wall right now and my  
friends have So Many Questions and I just laugh at them.**

**:-)**

Porthos was going strong in the debate. Charon would never be taken in by Porthos’ deceptive ‘meathead’ persona - the ex-foster-brothers knew each other far too well for that, but Porthos was nimble on his metaphorical feet. Without really thinking about it, Aramis’ pencil drew him fighting someone off with his wits and a table fork, buoyant and lethal and grinning about it.

**are we still on for Awkward Brunch and Croquet**

**Oh yes.**

He smiled softly to himself. His own love life might be a raging bushfire with occasional nice bits, but at least he could help someone else along. And That Nice Girl From The Library seemed like a lovely person and it would be nice to meet her face to face.

**Argh. Argh. Argh. The Most Beautiful Man In The World is smiling!  
He’s so pretty it’s painful to see.**

Aramis grinned fondly at the phone screen. Young love was so adorable. (In other people, anyway.)

**Ngh. It’s getting woooorse. What do I do???**

**calm down its going to be Okay. we planned for this remember?  
          I’ve got your back**

**now drop a hanky and get it over with**

**I can’t.**

**its a classic. trust me boys love that chivlary stuff**

**Not now, I can’t.**

**do it do it screw your courage ot the sticking place  
          just drop and go**

By the tone of his voice, Porthos was winding down, getting slowly to a nice one-two punch of a closing statement.

**No, really, I can’t. I’m sitting in a debate hall and he’s Right**  
**There getting ready to speak. The logistics just won’t stand.**  
**Soon, I promise.**

Aramis stopped.

He lifted his eyes to the hall where the scattered audience watched the debate. The slanting beams of sun from the high windows had shifted as he’d pecked at his phone - in one of the pools of light sat That Wonderful Girl, bathed in colour and brightness as if angels rested on her shoulders. She held a phone in one hand and looked up herself, blue eyes very wide.

There was a cough. Athos fixed him with one of his formidable sideways stares and, automatically, Aramis jerked to his feet.

Notes. Notes were somewhere, he was supposed to have notes for this. He grabbed up a sheaf of papers from the table. Somewhere in the hall a chair squeaked.

For the first time in his life, Aramis Rene Herblay had nothing to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _I don’t know what a sous-video wand is, but I hope t wasn’t too dire_ \- Sous-vide is a posh cooking technique where you vacuum seal your meat in plastic and throw it in a temperature controlled water bath (it makes for very tender perfectly cooked meat that *also* can sit and wait for when you're ready to finish it off in the frypan, which is handy in professional restaurants.) One of the 'home' versions of these is a wand that you can stick in your already owned pots. It is unlikely anyone, even a teenager, would try to use one as a hair-curler, but For the Sake of the Story...
> 
> // _...in his bright pink _Go Petunias!_ shirt._ \- a Visual Aid: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d9/bb/71/d9bb712317e61ac15d0e887872e875a7--the-loser-men-wear.jpg


	12. Root

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Content warnings at the bottom, if you’re curious.

“I was fifteen and I was a good girl,” Ana said quietly, “and I was pregnant.”

It was easier to say this into the darkness, she thought. To pretend that she was speaking to an old friend, or God. She lowered her eyes, took a breath, looked up. She pitched her voice low, conversational, in the register she knew sounded pleasing, and let the microphone do the work.

She had them, the people in the listening darkness, at least for a while.

“In the town where I grew up, the school I went to, no-one talked about birth control - not condoms or pills or anything like that. We were all supposed to be pure, above such things. _Good girls didn't get pregnant.”_

The light on her was bright, pressing against her like outrage. A door opened at the back, someone fumbled a light switch, and for a brief moment she saw the entire hall, all the people gathered for the emergency meeting of the local Catholic schools association. It was an eclectic bunch, a lot of families up and down the income brackets, all dressed neatly, a few teachers some ecclesiastic and some not - she recognised one curly-haired lady as a nun who helped out at one of the shelters nearby. 

Seated in state along one wall were the people who had called the meeting, Councilman Richelieu and some cronies, school principals, and the visiting Father Sestini, black-bearded and grim. Even silent his eyes flashed with thunder. Across from them in a lone chair the woman whose Health class had caused such furore, Miss Ninon, sat regal and furious as Queen Jezebel before her execution. 

Ana glanced dispassionately at the one who had turned on the light. A little dazzled, it took her a moment to recognise the Most Beautiful Man In The World, packed neatly into a suit, with a clean-shaven face and his dark hair falling about his ears. He looked a little shamefaced, with one hand on the light-switch, a large brown envelope in the other. Wincing, he doused the lights and scurried for a seat.

Ana swallowed, stilled the wobble in her voice, and continued recounting the bad pregnancy of her mid-teens - the physical issues, the ostracism, the complete inability to continue her schooling… “I wasn’t allowed to keep him,” she added, “that wasn’t anything my family was prepared for and, ill and on my own, I couldn’t see any way I could give - Henry - a decent life. I pray every night that Agnes, the woman who took him, is as kind as she looked.”

She cocked her head thoughtfully. “Some of you, I believe, think that all this was nothing more than I deserved, for _straying._ Others that there was money in my family and other girls have it so much worse - that’s fair. And some feel sorry for me, perhaps, and think my parents should have protected me better.”

She lowered her eyes, raised them. “And what does _any_ of this have to do with Miss Ninon’s health class?” She glanced to where young Fleur’s favourite teacher should still be sitting, and imagined the woman’s sapphire eyes. “After all, we’re here because she was discussing -” Ana consulted a notecard - “the use of condoms and latex dams in oral sex, to prevent disease.

“Well, that’s just kinky.” She let the note fall. “It’s dangerous to give young people ideas and tell them about disturbing things.” Folding her hands she added, “I truly believe we are all here from the desire to protect the young ones in the school. And all I can tell you is my own experience.” She let her voice crack like a whip. _“Ignorance protects no-one.”_

Digging nails into her palm she added, “Thank you for your time.” She curtsied briefly and walked off the stage, stumbling in the darkness.

Sylvie Baudin from the Women’s Health group caught her, steadying her at the shoulders and dabbing at her eyes briskly with a tissue. Ana sniffed muckily. “I did it all wrong,” she said, “I messed up.” 

Sylvie, familiar with small children and distraught women, made her blow her nose into the tissue and clucked soothingly. “It isn’t over and besides you did just fine, eh? C’mon, Cousin Constance has a thermos of tea waiting for you.” And, brisk as somebody’s mum or an army logistics officer, she ushered Ana out to red-headed Constance and marshalled the next speaker.

 

**

 

“Will she be alright?”

“What’s in the envelope?” Anne asked softly, perched on the tailgate of Constance’s van. There was - still - the sound of Ana's sobbing coming from the shadows inside. She left Constance to it. Anne was not one of Nature’s Huggers.

Aramis tugged the brown paper document case out of his suit jacket and unwound the thread sealing the flap. He looked inside, raised his eyebrows, then shook it over one hand, miming surprise when nothing fell out. “It had Councilman Richelieu spooked, though.” He shrugged and smiled mirthlessly. “Our Armand and I go back a ways. I was just, um, weighting his dice a little bit.”

“You’re Josie Herblay’s kid, aren’t you?” Anne asked drily. “It’s easier to see when the beard’s off.”

“So I’m told,” he said mildly. “You were… Magpie on the streets, yes?” At her nod he added, “I liked the mohawk.”

“We all thought you died when the Savoy Hotel blew. What happened?” she asked, still soft.

He hopped up beside her. “I was still a minor when I got out of the ICU, so Treville kicked me out to the country to stay with an old army buddy. My mother signed some papers I think, I don’t know. They meant well.” He whistled. “Crazy old coot and his homebrew…”

“I know it’s me saying it, but you should talk to your friends.”

He chortled silently. “It's a large pill for them to swallow, Lady Magpie. The ones who would understand the teenage hooking tend to jib at snitching to the cops. It’s just how these things go.” Kicking his feet he added, “I don’t want my past to be all they see, yes? A cut flower in a glass, no-one cares where it came from, it's just beautiful.”

“And it's dying.”

He flinched.

“Your ma was good to me one time,” Anne said. “So I’ll tell you this: the girl in there will maybe understand more than you think. She sticks to _me_ like glue, and you will understand that I’m a bit... prickly.” 

“What happened between you and Athos?” Aramis asked with curiosity. “He’ll never say.”

She curled her upper lip.

He lifted his hands. “Enough honesty for tonight: understood.”

She huffed. Then, rolling her eyes, she added, _“Still_ snivelling in the back of the van… some people have no spine.”

Anger and indignation flashed into Aramis’ face. “You saw her talk in there,” he said with heat, “and you dare -”

Anne grinned and patted his wrist. _”Now_ there’s enough honesty.” He scowled. “Talk to her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // CW: References to past underage, past prostitution, teen pregnancy, and Milady is trying to help out someone’s love life so things must be dire.
> 
> // _regal and furious as Queen Jezebel before her execution_ \- anyone who tells you that ‘painted jezebel’ means a fancy-woman-who-sleeps-around, well, a) it’s none of their business and b) their theology is _shitty._ Jezebel was a queen who dressed well, didn’t convert to Christianity, did some dodgy dealing along with her hubby, and died with a great deal of pride despite what her killers tried to do with her body.
> 
> // _Cousin Constance_ \- in this universe Constance is Fleur’s cousin through her mum, and Sylvie is Fleur’s cousin through her dad (the Baudin/Boden/Bodin surname that they share). Fair enough?
> 
> // Constance is now The Friend With The Van, and thus is stuck transporting friends, friends of friends, distant relatives, gear for expeditions, ~~inconvenient bodies,~~ and her cousin Fleur’s great harp.
> 
> // Anne/Milady is the Prickly Friend Who Threatens To Cut You (But Would Secretly Die On Your Behalf) 
> 
> // Ana is the Friend Everyone Wants To Hug.
> 
> // On the spear side, Porthos is Van Friend, Athos is Prickly Friend, and Everyone Hugs Aramis. (D’Artagnan is Annoying Young Bouncy Friend, which would make his closest counterpart Fleur. Tough: she’s getting involved with young Miss Pepin.
> 
> // I nicked Milady’s teenage nickname ‘Magpie’ from shadowintheshade, with the hopes that esteemed writer does not mind. I just really liked it.
> 
> **
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter is so dark. It just really, really wanted to happen this way.


	13. Awkward Brunch 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I could handle the brunch in a single chapter...
> 
> Fool!
> 
> We'll get to the end when we get to it.

_overture_

In the end they went with brunch after all.

Ana broke ahead of her Girl Posse at the cafe doors and dashed to the counter, light-foot in ballet flats, leggings, and a soft floaty skirt.

"Hi," she said, pushing back a sleeve that had fallen too far down her wrist, "Um, I reserved a table for ten a couple of days ago, party of Bourbon, but there were some... complications and..."

The server looked behind her at the wide glass doors, both wedged open, and the seething mass that was balking itself trying to get through, a mess of interested friends and friends of friends, and relations of friends, and friends of relations, and - “You’re going to need a bigger table,” she said.

“Yes. Sorry!”

The server, a thin woman with short, curly grey hair called Merlin by the name tag said reassuringly, “We’ll put you out on the terrace. There’s a nice view of the river.”

 _“Thank you,”_ said Ana fervently. Merlin chuckled and sent her minion, a plump purple-haired girl with eyes off the Mongolian steppes, out to shuffle furniture.

Ana waited until neither was looking, then dropped a wad of cash into the tip jar, and another into the bread-and-fishes collection.

“Ana?”

She turned, squeaked, tripped. Her elbow swung wide and knocked a stand of ornamental, cream-covered tarts and cakes. She seized it to stop it falling, overcompensated and pulled it towards her, the cakes started to slide, she - 

 

**

 

_got you_

Aramis broke out of the scrum by the doors and ducked between Porthos, still bickering with Charon, and fiery-haired Adele who was busy taking a snapshot of something with her phone.

He was wearing his best ‘date’ jeans - of a soft and strokable denim and flattering fit. That he’d tried on five different shirts this morning already was no-one’s business but his own - and Porthos’, who had laughed, and Athos’, who had sighed gustily and then picked out one with narrow blue stripes. It was the perfect shade, truly, except he wasn’t entirely sure about the cuffs, now he thought on it, he -

That Wonderful Girl was standing at the counter talking to one of the servers.

“Ana?”

The word bubbled out of him, unbidden, and The Girl turned, squeaked, and started to fall.

Aramis moved to catch her just as a clot of people behind him pressed forward suddenly and he went flying. With the grace and vigour of a very athletic man, he mastered his forward momentum, caught the girl, checked the falling cakestand with his hip, and swirled them into a tango hold.

“It’s alright,” he said, smiling rakishly, “I’ve got you.”

“So you have,” she whispered, staring up at him. This close he could feel the warmth of her body, the surge of her breath. In the distance, he heard cheering and applause.

It was then that the uppermost petit-four lost its tenuous grip on stability and fell, landing on the top of Aramis’ head cream-side down, as is the custom.

“Excuse me, but I must wash my hair,” he said, still holding her, as a dollop of cream slid slowly downwards. She offered him a handkerchief.

 

**

 

_pressing the suit_

Old Man Treville had other suits, it was true, tailored to fit and maintained with the neatness of a man who had once lived in uniform. Most, however, had been caught in a mishap with his building’s sprinkler system, and the man had fallen back on an older one from storage. Beautifully made, there was something in the flare of the legs and the sharp points of the shirt collar that had Anne itching to say something sardonic about gold medallions and chest hair. 

“I bet he was a swinger in his day,” she hazarded at last, eyeing the slight blemish that an experience eye could identify as a rewoven bullet hole.

“Oh, you,” said Constance, sipping a tall glass of grapefruit juice. “Were you the one that invited him?”

Anne blinked slowly, one of her ways of saying ‘yes’.

They glanced at the packed table on the terrace, and then at Treville in the corner by a tall rose-tree, talking into a cellphone with grim purpose. “I thought he retired?”

Anne shrugged. “Some things never really leave you. He arrested me one time!” she added, with something bordering on pride. “So much fun meeting the old man at our first tenancy meeting, and I’m not being sarcastic here.”

Constance tugged at one of her auburn braids. “I’m not… entirely sure this was a good idea.”

Anne glanced at Ana, sitting straight at the head of the table, nervously folding napkins into sad-winged swans, and then at Aramis in a knot of people, his hair dripping onto his shoulders and talking a bit too bright, a bit too loud. “Moral support,” she said, grinning.

“Hmph.”

“You know me, I’m like Puck: a merry wanderer in the night and you don’t know what silly jape I’ll pull next. I can’t help myself.”

“You feed on suffering.”

“That too. And besides, those two love their drama - I’m just helping things along.”

An off-colour joke by Ana’s would-be inamorato rang out too loud in a sudden hush. She flushed bright scarlet; Aramis winced. By the potted rose, Treville snapped, “No, your _other_ right,” into the phone.

“I’m just wondering,” Constance said slowly, “does Old Man Treville _know_ this is a ‘pretending to be casual with friends’ date, or does he think this is a ‘time to meet the family’ date.

Anne’s cat-green eyes narrowed. “Ah…” she said. She had a sudden craving for a cigarette.

The glass doors into the cafe opened and through them came Sylvie Baudin, accessorising her wide-brimmed hat and flower-felted jacket with a bulging satchel and a very small child hanging in a carrier from her back, sucking a thumb. Athos, who had been sitting taciturn and sardonic next to Aramis, holding a knot of silence around himself, twitched suddenly. His chair scraped; his green eyes widened. Anne’s grin restored itself. “Oh, I like this. It’s fun to see Athos suffer.”

“No, it’s not,” said Constance automatically. Then she twitched and grumbled, “Well, maybe a little.”

They opened again and a young man in a European-made suit with luxuriant black hair and enormous sunglasses swanned through, pointedly ignoring the brunch-party, and found one of the lesser, satellite tables on the terrace, near the rail where he could stare at the ducks in the water. Ana saw him, and blanched.

Treville’s phone snapped shut with a final click.

The glass doors opened one last time, and a small fat man, balding but with ample tawny chest hair showing through the vent of his garish Hawaiian shirt, held out his arms. A phone was in one hand; a large bottle of clear amber liquid in the other.

“That isn’t hard cider,” snapped Treville grimly.

“It isn’t hard cider,” repeated the shorter man.

Another chair scrape, and Aramis stood up with a jerk. “Jean?” he quavered.

The short man held up one finger.

“Papa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of making Aramis' 'papa' de Foix, as a friend of Treville's, but it felt like it was intruding on Porthos' story too much so you're stuck with an OC. Hope you like Jean.


	14. Awkward Brunch 2

_family matters_

“Papa?”

Aramis’ chair scraped and he stood up with a start. “So you’ve come then,” he said, squaring his shoulders. Water dripped again from tendrils of his hair. 

“Yes,” affirmed the older man. “Did you fall in the river?”

“I was Helping a Lady.”

“Of course you were.”

“At this time, at this place, old man, you come,” Aramis repeated. “You _dare?”_

“Oh yes.”

With a sudden start, Aramis vaulted over the table, rattling glasses as he went, and wrapped his arms around Jean’s barrel chest. The older man grunted from the shock of it, then again as his son lifted and spun him.

“It’s good to see you,” Aramis burbled, “how was the trip, did you take the ferry? I can get you something if your stomach is troubling you, it’s been too long…”

Jean pocketed his phone to clap Aramis on the back and laughed softly as his son rested his chin on the top of his head.

 

**

 

_the talk_

“If I’m driving your harp to that recital next week you can come cheer me on at the shotput.”

“Sure thing, Cousin Constance,” said Fleur agreeably.

“If we can get through your fans, that is,” added her young friend.

“... What fans?”

“Cousin Constance,” said Fleur with dignity, “please understand that I am speaking in the most general way and out of a desire to provide information, and not to.... make things weird.”

Constance stared at the girl warily. Fleur had gotten her hair clipped quite short and wispy, like an anemic fairy. It suited her well enough, though her ears still stuck out. Beside her, her new friend Simone Pepin had released her plaits and her hair was a dark fizz held back by a daisy headband that matched the choker around Fleur’s skinny neck.

“Simply as an FYI,” Fleur continued, “because you Don’t Seem To Know -”

“You’re really pretty,” Simone interjected. 

“Oddly charismatic, and I knew you when you had pimples.”

 _“You_ have pimples,” Constance said.

“I am just saying,” Fleur said, “that you cut a Fine Figure of Womanhood, and it isn’t just Baby Lesbians that notice these things. Speaking in a general way.” 

At her side, Simone Pepin was nodding seriously. At her other side, young d’Artagnan was also nodding. Then he threw up his hands and squeaked, “Speaking in a general way. Did I mention I have a girlfriend now? She’s really nice, I email her all the time in Canada.”

Constance stared at them. D’Artagnan was blushing furiously, blotchy red in his brown cheeks. By the line of their thin arms, Fleur and Simone were holding hands under the table.

“Never talk to me about this again.”

 

**

 

_baby steps_

“Kids can smell fear,” Porthos said helpfully.

“Think of it as making friends with a cat,” Aramis added. “Play it cool and they’ll come and throw up on you in an amiable fashion.”

“Your death when it comes,” said Athos, “will not be merciful.” He looked at his daughter, dandled quietly on Aramis’ lap. She looked back at him. She was small, so small, and looked more like Sylvie than she looked like him. A bit lighter, perhaps, and her hair curled more softly. She had her mother’s dark eyes. She’d grown so much!

“Do you want to hug Athos?” Aramis asked Clementine quietly. She shook her head. “Okay. Maybe later. We’re having something to eat now, so I’m putting you in the high chair.” She looked at her mother, chatting quietly with Treville across the table, and nodded. Once strapped in, she patted the left side of her chest and he shook his head. “Alas, Clem, we are unequipped.” He pinched his fingers together and lifted them to his mouth. “Food from a jar, today, and formula milk,” he added, curving his thumb and forefinger around an imaginary cup. She scowled at him and he laughed, unrepentant. “You look like your dad.” He stepped back, digging into a satchel bulging with nappies, wet wipes, jars of puree, and other arcane paraphernalia… Unscrewing a small jar, he plunked it in Athos’ hand, along with a rainbow-coloured spoon and a damp cloth draped over the older man’s shoulder, then sauntered off.

“Be strong,” said Porthos, gripping Athos’ other shoulder. “And small spoonfuls.”

“Don’t leave me,” Athos hissed.

Porthos chuckled deep in his chest. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Spoon, Athos. Spoon as if your life depended on it!”

From across the table, Sylvie called, “She likes it if you sing. None of that namby-pamby baby stuff. Proper songs.”

His daughter was scowling at him and the spoon of lamb-and-broccoli mush - there was something oddly familiar about it. In desperation, Athos opened his mouth and sang the first thing that came to mind. _As down from a glen in the Easter morn to a city fair rode I. There armoured lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by. No pipe did hum, nor battle drum…_

Sylvie took another picture with her phone as her estranged husband tried to clean a misaimed clod of food from his daughter’s chin.

“Going up on your wall?” Treville asked dryly. 

Sylvie shrugged. “It’s complicated. We’ll see how it goes today.”

Treville nodded.

“I never would have picked Aramis and Jean as related,” she said cautiously. It was odd, speaking with Treville these days. Sylvie had first known him when she was a teenager, as a satellite to an unlikely friendship between her father and a stiffly proper retired police officer. She’d never quite felt that she left the inexperience of her youth behind - always running to catch up - and yet, he _talked_ with her now. Perhaps he had wanted a replacement for Hubert and she would have to do, or perhaps Clementine, her own new hostage to fortune, had added an unnoticed gravitas. But he talked to her.

“It’s complicated,” said Treville, lines of age cutting into his cheeks.

“Hm,” said Sylvie.

Clementine batted Athos on the cheek insistently and, panicked, Athos began, in his beautiful tenor, another song about a massacre. The child giggled.

Sylvie took another picture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _Did I mention I have a girlfriend now?_ \- more of a penpal, really, but she posts youtube clips of her ventriloquist dummies and that’s pretty cool.
> 
> // _He pinched his fingers together and lifted them to his mouth._ \- Aramis and Clementine are using Baby Sign, which some families find helpful with their small children. (My sister says her daughter's favourite sign was All Done, shaking hands in front of her chest, when she wanted down from the high chair.)
> 
> // _As down from a glen…_ \- Athos is singing a sad Irish song about a quelled uprising called “The Foggy Dew” (as opposed to a cheerful English song about getting laid called “The Foggy, _Foggy_ Dew”.) Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foggy_Dew_(Irish_ballad) and https://youtu.be/yaS3vaNUYgs
> 
> This isn't, by the by, a commentary on what I think of Sylvie and Athos’s canonical ending. I'm using the AU to play with character ages and have them meeting each other at different stages of their life journeys to see what happens. This is s2 Athos + post-s3 Sylvie and, uh, the man has issues. Which he is trying to deal with.


	15. Awkward Brunch 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Louis.
> 
> Also, some murky relationship dynamics. This is not the fluffiest chapter. There is a happy ending planned.

_Anne_

“I should have known he’d take up with a girl called Ana or Annie or somesuch,” Aramis’ father said easily as a large plate of french toast and banana was put in front of him. “He had the biggest crush on that Anne of Green Gables girl.”

“It was not a crush,” Aramis said with dignity. “And Ana isn’t, well, we’ve only really just - and. This is.”

“I mean,” Ana added helpfully, “Awkward Brunch. You see.”

Aramis nodded wisely.

“Got it,” said Jean, with the air of one who had not, as happens, ‘got it’. Beside him Porthos sucked in his breath, very still, holding in the belly laugh.

“And besides,” said Aramis, “I only read them in the first place because there was nothing else but army technical manuals, brewing journals, and Louis L’Amour.”

“I’m a man of simple tastes,” Jean said, pouring some chilli sauce over his plate.

“I’ve no head for brewing, I don’t like cowboys, and I didn’t want to end up on somebody’s watchlist. It made perfect sense.” Aramis flicked his eyes to where Athos, face still and sober, lifted Clementine into the air by their linked hands so that she dangled, giggling and kicking her feet. “ _... always slightly distrustful of sunshine,”_ Aramis quoted lightly, _“which seemed too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously.”_ He smiled softly, watching them. The girl hiccuped and Athos put her down hurriedly, patting her once she had reached the ground as if to reassure himself she had not been damaged.

 _“There was a saving something about the mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor…”_ Ana murmured, eyes kitten-mischievous as Sylvie sat beside the pair and Athos said something very grave, and his wife flashed into sudden laughter.

Her hand, on the table, felt warmth. His little finger touched hers. Looking out across the river, he whispered, _“I’m frightened—now that it has come I’m actually frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me?”_

 _“It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life,”_ Ana said softly, to the ducks in the river and a red kite in the sky. Neither hand moved.

“He found a stash of books my wife left, up in the attic,” Jean told Porthos. “I don’t even know how he got up there. After that he’d hobble out to the lake and read them, one after another, then he’d start up again from the beginning.” He smiled, watching Aramis and Ana not quite hold hands. “That’s when I knew he’d found a home.”

“He was a foster?” Porthos asked, frowning.

“Adopted,” said Aramis, still looking out at the river. “Papers and everything. I must confess I never quite warmed to Gilbert,” he added meditatively. “Not after he pulled her hair and called her Carrots.”

“One mistake and he paid for it for years,” Anne said. “That’s enough, surely?”

“Point,” he acknowledged. “And the grudge sharpened her academic edge, there’s that. But I haven’t found pulled hair and name-calling a good start to a relationship. The first time through the books I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.” He wrinkled his nose.

“I never found you objecting to pulled hair before,” said Adele, from down the table. Further along, Charon nodded in agreement and Porthos stared at him. Ana looked back at them also, eyes startled. “Uhm,” Adele added hurriedly, steepling her delicate fingers, “when getting the colour out after a game of paintball. Very good paintballer, is Aramis.”

“I noticed that,” agreed Charon.

“Excuse me,” Porthos said. “I’m just going to get some air.” He stood up, clapping Aramis on the shoulder.

Aramis covered his eyes with his hand. _“Diana_ was my favoured romantic prospect,” he said, forging gamely on.

 _“¿Por qué no ambos?”_ Ana asked sweetly.

Behind her, the man in the beautiful European suit sitting alone choked on his coffee.

“Excuse me,” said Ana, rising. “I shall help this total stranger.”

 

**

 

  _friends and family_

“Now there’s an interesting game,” said Charon easily, “how many of your friends have I banged?” His eyes glinted. “I’ll give you a clue, Scholarship Boy: more than one.”

“Aramis belongs to himself,” Porthos gritted, sitting on the steps overlooking the river.

“I’m glad you think so.” Charon glinted a smile elegant as a blade of Toledo steel and sat down beside him. “Clears the air.”

“You’re not messing this up for my pal.”

“Nah, years ago, yeah? I just wanted to see the special gal. And screw with you some, keep you on your toes. You know me, always gotta pick on my little brother.”

“You are a shit, Charon.”

“Yep.”

Porthos sucked in a breath, held it, released. He catalogued the prickle on the back of his neck, the sweat on his palms, breathed.

“Shit.” Charon’s face darkened and he patted at Porthos’ jacket. “Where’s your inhaler?”

Porthos shook his head. “Not asthma. Just stress… stuff.”

“I didn’t -”

Another breath. “He didn’t tell me, is all. Not about sleeping with you, not being adopted. That’s a lot of stuff to ‘not come up’. I just… I get a bit panicky sometimes, dunno why.” He glanced up - Aramis was deep in conversation with his mysterious dad; Athos was letting his young daughter crawl all over him, tugging his ears. Breath. “Go on, tell me I’m soft.”

“Nah, you’re not soft,” came Flea’s salty voice. A shuffle, a thunk of her metal foot on the wood of the steps, and she sat down beside him, bracketing Porthos as they used to do. A hand came up and braced his neck. “You’re our delicate asthmatic flower.” She shared a look with Charon and they levered him upright and walked him down the steps to the river bank. “That de Foix ever write back?”

“Haven’t -” breath - “opened it yet.”

Tiny Flea and elegant Charon shared another look. “We’ll come over tonight, then.”

“Drink some beer, rip that plaster off.”

“Drink some more beer.”

"Y'can massage my stump: that'll take the mind off."

 

**

 

_Ana_

“Don’t take the sunglasses off!” Luis snapped. “Everyone thinks I’m in Barcelona. I Am Incognito.”

Ana dropped her hand and settled back wryly in the spare chair of Luis’s little table. “What brings you here, brother?”

His smile blossomed, showing all his white teeth. _“You,_ little sister. I’ve missed you.”

Despite herself, her shoulders relaxed, and she covered his hand, larger than her own but with skin as delicate.

“I’m not interfering I promise,” he said. “I am just… drinking my coffee.” He looked at his cup dubiously. “Do you think the kitchen staff here wash their hands?”

She narrowed her eyes and he tossed his head, luxuriant black hair flying. “It’s a concern.” Then he grinned again. _“I_ hear that you’re doing quite well in your classes, even that Social Work filler…”

Ana blew air between her lips and smiled. “Oh, a little bit well, perhaps.”

“Are you ready to come home?”

“Not yet, brother.”

“I could cut your allowance,” he said, sing-song, then caught himself, wincing.

“No, you couldn’t,” she told him, flatly. “I rechecked the paperwork. With lawyers. And besides, the trust opens up on my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“I know,” he said, troubled, glancing at where Ana’s friend Anne slouched in a chair between red-headed Adele and Constance, grim as a crow with her hair twisted into a knot and then spiked. Curls fluttered around the dark woman’s face; they didn’t soften her at all.

“You’re not suggesting -”

“Ana, Ana, _reinita,_ you have to understand. When you’re rich, people keep coming round. They, they _batten,_ Ana, you they tell what you want to hear. _They want to be your friend._ Or your money’s friend. I just worry you’ll make another mistake.”

 _“You liked Rochefort, too,”_ she hissed, very softly.

“I never did,” he said calmly.

“You said, ‘It’s so nice to see you smile, Ana,’ and, ‘We’ll take the man shooting at the end of week it’ll be fun, Ana.’”

“No. You’re misremembering.”

Anger flared in her but she tamped it down. Somehow.

“I just worry about you, is all.”

And he did, was the trouble. For all his ways, Luis loved her. There were things she wanted to ask, but instead she reached, touched his cheek, and then plucked off his shielding sunglasses. Behind them his chocolate-brown eyes were worried as always.

She said, “Come drink your coffee at the grown-up table, hey little brother?”

Indignation flared in his open mouth, in the sudden spark in the chocolate of his eyes.

He stood and bowed, hand on heart. “As you wish, little sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _“...there was a saving something about the mouth…_ \- so I _may_ have thought about putting maybe a couple of quotes from _Anne of Green Gables_ in and then mainlined the book in a couple of days. I REGRET NOTHING. Also, Athos is clearly Marilla in another life.
> 
> // _“How many of your friends have I banged?”_ \- I found myself wondering what someone who is a bit of a dick might do, if he wasn’t exploding things. And, this brings in a (slightly) dodgy love affair since treason isn't in this narrative. 
> 
> // _“¿Por qué no ambos?”_ \- "Why not both?"
> 
> // _Reinita_ \- I get all the Spanish from the internet, so please comment if you think I made a mistake. But apparently this is an endearment that means ‘little queen’.


	16. Thunder Over Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post and be damned, says I.
> 
> EDIT: I expanded one of the later sections to make the backstory more clear.

_snag_

“All aired out?”

Porthos stared out at the river where a tangle of branches moved through the water in a lazy pinwheel. “Yeah, I think so.” He felt the warmth of Aramis’ leg at his side.

“About Charon,” Aramis said in a rush, “I’m sorry. It was years ago and I didn’t kn-”

“He dragged you into one of our grudges,” Porthos said slowly. “Shouldn’t it be me that’s apologising?” He could hear his friend blink, and then Aramis sat down beside him in a familiar tangle of limbs. Aramis opened his hand and tore at the hunk of crusty bread he was holding.

“Why were you hobbling?”

Aramis looked up, startled, the half-savaged bread still in his hand, crumbs in another. A green-necked duck stared at him accusingly.

Porthos bumped him with his shoulder. “Why were you hobbling around when you read those Anne-books and got yourself adopted?”

“A building fell on me.” Aramis smiled crookedly. “I was stuck with a dinky aluminium crutch for a bit. Looked better once I got some stickers on that baby, all flamy red so it would go faster.”

Porthos blew air through his nose. “Did you not tell me because you thought I’d be bored? Or I’d, somehow did you reckon I’d think less of you?”

Aramis snapped bread out to the ducks with a flick of his wrist. “It was another life. Hard to bring it up.”

Porthos opened his hand and let his friend drop a shred of bread in his palm. Flicking crumbs out to the birds he said. “Well, when you’re ready to bring it up, I’ll be ready to listen.”

 

**

 

_family and friends_

Luis perched awkwardly at a seat squashed in at the end of the table. Beside him, a trio of teenagers sat in a row staring at him with guarded wonderment. He granted them a wide smile, showing off his beautiful teeth, and opened the (plastic-coated!) menu. One of them proffered a wicker basket of bread.

Another, with her thick black hair bound back with a daisy headband, said, “So, er, you’re Fleur’s Cousin’s Friend Ana’s Brother?”

“Probaby?” Luis hazarded, breaking open bread that still steamed from the oven. Daisy Girl nodded thoughtfully. “You may call me Luis,” he said graciously.

“How long are you visiting?” said another daisy girl, with wispy blonde hair and ears that reminded him of Ana when she was young.

“Oh, this isn’t a visit I’m Just Passing By,” Luis told Other Daisy Girl blithely. “I wanted to give Ana something.” Fretful, he added, “Everything comes out wrong, though.”

“Maybe it will come out better in a bit,” said their third, a boy with straight black hair and enormous ears and a hastily scribbled name tag (Luis squinted - _Honorary B-?)_ tucked into his shirt pocket. Honorary B looked at the Daisy Girls. They looked at him. One nodded.

“So, er, Mr Luis,” the boy said. “Can we just ask -”

“Yes?” Luis asked kindly.

“How do you get your hair so nice -”

“I mean, it’s really glossy -”

“And it _flows.”_

 _“Oh,”_ Luis said, “there’s nothing in it, really. Some people say you need a custom protocol, but I can tell you it’s just a matter of choosing the _right_ pre-made products, and it’s so much more economical. I like…”

 

**

 

_ending_

“Another happy ending, it seems,” said Anne, watching Athos crouching next to Sylvie, as she held her daughter with her head hidden against her shoulder and stroked the girl’s back.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” said Constance. “You’re allowed to be happy, too.”

“You’re being nice,” Anne said, disarmingly mild. “I despise ‘nice’.”

“Have you given it a try, to find out?”

“Yes.” The potato omelette on Anne’s was being taken apart, sliced with silverware wielded by slender, clever fingers and all its pieces laid out in mathematical precision. “Ask Athos how that went down.”

Behind Anne, where the dark-haired woman could not see, Adele Basset waved her hands in a desperate _Abort_ gesture.

Constance took a deep swig of her grapefruit juice. _You’re not -_ she thought, and _But -_ and _Not everybody is like Athos’ brother, except -_

Craven, she said, “I think my cousin wants to give me some lippy and take me out bra-shopping.”

There was a flicker of relief in Anne’s eyes before the sharp-edged amusement entered them. “Oh, but you look so _nice_ in flannel.”

“It’s _comfortable,”_ Constance gritted. “When you’re in Engineering, comfortable is good.”

Anne ran the backs of her fingers along Constance’s forearm. “So pretty,” she purred, very sweetly. Somewhere along the table, a piece of silverware fell.

Anne smirked, and ruffled Constance’s auburn hair where it fell loose around her forehead. Constance giggled.

 

**

 

_nothing you did_

“She’s just a bit peopled out,” Sylvie told her husband reassuringly, rubbing the curve of her daughter’s spine as Clementine hid her face against her. “It’s nothing you did.” Athos blinked confused green eyes at her. At her other side Treville smiled slightly, amused in a grey and proper sort of a way. He wasn’t half bad with kids, Treville, for someone who’d had none of his own.

Clementine’s warm bulk stirred against her. She’d want nursing soon.

A chair scraped harshly against concrete. Sylvie glanced up.

“No,” young Simone said, standing, loud enough that the whole table heard. Conversation died. Frostily, she told Luis, “I’m not making up some story because he ran away. Or that I never knew him. I don’t _need_ to make up a story. My father was Anton Pepin and he died when the Savoy Hotel blew up and you can take your condescending pity and you can _shove_ it.”

“I’m not suggesting anything -” Luis said, leaning back in his chair and waving his white hands. “You misunderstood. No, really -”

 _“Shove it.”_ Simone held her head high as a queen’s, near vibrating with fury.

“Hey, kid,” Aramis said, coming up the steps to the patio with Porthos. “Your dad was Anton Pepin? The electrician? I met him just before he died. He was a good guy.”

"You were there, too? At the Savoy?”

Aramis hesitated, all eyes upon him. Finally he squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and said, very simply, “Yes.”

In the silence that followed, Sylvie saw Porthos mouth a swear-word. Her eyes flicked around the crowded table - some faces blank, or surprised, or calculating in hurried speculation. Some knowing.

“How did he die?”

“He had a toolkit - I think he was just there to fix something that night. But there was a beam falling, after the first shock, and he pushed a couple of teenagers out of the way. He didn’t get clear himself. It was pretty quick, as these things go.”

“Were they worth my father’s life?” she asked, voice wobbling.

“Marsac - I don’t know what happened to Marsac. I know the other boy is trying to be.”

By her side, Sylvie felt Treville make a soft breathy sound, as if he had been stabbed in the ribs.

Simone swallowed hard. “I looked it up, after, what it must have been like in the bang. Some say you don’t feel it because of the adrenaline, or it’s like a punch, or -”

“Not here,” Aramis said gently.

Very low, Sylvie said to Treville, “Aramis asked me once, if I’d been your CI, and I thought he was joking around again.”

Distantly she heard Athos’ low voice saying, “Sylvie, you’re holding a bit tight and Clem is starting to worry, Sylvie you need to let go, Sylvie -”

"The Savoy Bombing, that was a police op? With teenagers mixed in doing the dirty work?"

"Sylvie -"

_“What the hell did you do?”_

Treville looked so very old. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Please. Not here.”

The cafe doors opened and the younger server came through, her purple hair vibrant and a large camera in her hands. “Are you ready for your group photo?” she said brightly.

Somebody coughed.

 

**

 

_flounce_

“Well I'll just go then,” said Luis. He put his enormous, expensive sunglasses back on with a defiant tap of his forefinger.

“I try and I try and it never comes out right,” he added, with a sad little sniff.

Opening his wallet he retrieved a sheaf of money. “I'll pay for all the food. And a tip for yourself, my good woman.”

“As you like,” said Merlin, by the cash register.

Luis hesitated, and slid another envelope across the counter. “Could you make sure this gets to the blonde girl, who was sitting at the head of that table?”

Merlin glanced through the glass doors, where a crowd of people was trying, very awkwardly, to smile for a camera. A flash, and the group disintegrated hurriedly.

“I'll see that it gets to her,” she said kindly. She glanced at the envelope, which just had _Henri Barnard_ written on it with loopy, fantastical flourishes. She looked up and counted the cash. “Oi!” she called to Luis’ back, “This is too much.”

He disappeared through the front doors.

 

**

 

_wildflower_

“That wasn’t Awkward Brunch, that was downright Fraught.”

The Most Beautiful Man in the World jumped as she spoke, glancing at her over his shoulder.

“Nothing is on fire yet,” he said, turning away from the river.

“I have hopes for Constance’s cousin,” she said.

Aramis stepped towards her. “Are we still good?” he asked. His hands lifted, fidgeted - dropped.

“Social Croquet is on my calendar,” Ana said gravely.

“Ah,” he said suddenly, lifting one finger. “But not on Saturday. I promised I’d talk to a girl about her father.”

“Do you want company?”

He shook his head. “I have a Boy Posse coming.”

She lowered her eyes.

“But,” Aramis added, “ice cream on the couch with company and a good movie after, I would be very grateful for.”

“I have the best movies,” she said sweetly, “and the _very_ best ice cream.”

“You are blessed among women,” he said fervently.

Ana had noticed, among the Most Beautiful Man in the World’s many virtues, his hips. They were just the right height for her to put her hands, hook her thumbs under the belt, and draw him towards her, gentle and inexorable. He didn't resist.

“I'm not a bit changed, you know,” he warned her. “Pruned down and branched out, maybe.”

She kissed him on the lips and swallowed his protestations, and felt it when his tense springy strength melted into her. His arms wrapped around her, so gentle.

It felt like coming home.

 

**

 

 _You gave me dandelions._  
_They took our lawn_  
_by squatters’ rights—_  
_round suns rising_  
_in April, soft moons_  
_blowing away in June._  
_You gave me lady slippers,_  
_bloodroot, milkweed,_  
_trillium whose secret number_  
_the children you gave me_  
_tell. In the hierarchy_  
_of flowers, the wild_  
_rise on their stems_  
_for naming._  
_Call them weeds._  
_I pick them as I_  
_picked you,_  
_for their fierce,_  
_unruly joy._

“Wildflowers” by Linda Pastan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where Next?
> 
> // Various awkward conversations are had, in dribs and drabs around the city. Simone has a good long cry, as does Aramis. They hug it out with friends after.
> 
> // D’Artagnan starts palling around with Fleur and Simone Pepin, initially because he reckons if he practices Being Friends With Girls then Constance will like him. Turns out Simone is really cool and lugging Fleur’s harp around gives him so many muscles, you don’t even know. They become the Inseparables of their generation.
> 
> // Miss Ninon keeps her job. So does Councillor Richelieu. *shrug*
> 
> // In a little while, Ana writes to Agnes Barnard, and gets a friendly reply and a picture of her son.
> 
> // Because Ana and Anne’s apartment is getting very crowded for a couch-surfer, Constance moves into Porthos’ spare room, and their vans war for dominance in the driveway. Several months later Adele recruits Constance to help out with her new student film, a post-apocalyptic schlock-fest filmed in an old quarry, because Constance has licenses for heavy machinery and that. What with one thing and another, Constance ends up with a small cameo playing the electric guitar that shoots fire.
> 
> She remains oblivious to her fan club to this day.
> 
> // Anne successfully defends her thesis, "The Dynamics of an Asteroid", and to blow off steam after stars in the movie as 'Milady', femme fatale and Very Dangerous Lady, with an exquisite death scene...


	17. The Game of Van and Couch-Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta very kindly contributed an epilogue, and adds that there is an un-named crowd of people who will bend back their friends' ears for years to come with "I was totally _there"_ stories.

It was late, and Constance's ankle ached. She clomped grimly along the corridor, waving off the helpfully held arm of her ride home.

"Well, this is me," she said, as she fumbled her key in the lock.

Porthos laughed and carried her bag in for her. "I appreciate you asking for an extra boxing lesson, kiddo, if I haven't said already. Sometimes you want to talk things out, sometimes you just really want to hit something."

She growled low in her throat. In the dim light of the flat, the only sound was the TV left on and burbling to itself, some grand series of declarations and thrown broadswords she was too tired to care about. "I didn't plan on spraining my ankle on the way out of the gym, though. It's embarrassing. They'll ask questions in my class."

Porthos chuckled at her again. "Just say you took down three armed men in an attempted mugging. Or Death Yoga, the kind they have for people who think that Hot Yoga is too sissy. Think about what I said, yeah? I've got a van, you've got a van; I've got a spare room, you need a spare room..."

"Eh," Constance said doubtfully. "Ana and Anne's spare couch is pretty comfy..."

"Hey," the man spread his fingers wide over his heart. "This isn't a come on - me and that Alice Clerbeaux you met on Sunday have got an on again off again thing. Very accommodating lady, is Alice."

Her mouth twisted. Porthos gingerly eased his way around the unfamiliar room, looking for a place to stow her gym bag. "Come around tomorrow, have a cup of tea, and think about it. _And,"_ he said, with the air of one who has resolved all arguments, "I think your couch is otherwise occupied."

In the dim light, curled up like two lost kittens in a barn, That Wonderful Girl and The Most Beautiful Man In The World were wrapped around each other, sound asleep, their breathing even. On the telly, a hard bruiser with soppy eyes hoisted a young woman into the air and spun her giddily, announcing that she'd cut her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie playing is _Ladyhawke,_ for those who didn't recognise the scene.
> 
> Thank you for a lovely epilogue, Daisy Ninja Girl!


End file.
